Who's the Best Brand in Town? By Darryl Wilkinson July 13, 2006 — Sony is the best brand around - or so say the majority of the 2,351 U.S. adults surveyed online by Harris Interactive between June 7 and 13, 2006. This marks the seventh consecutive year that Sony has made it to the top spot beating out other brands such as Dell, Coca-Cola, Ford, Honda, and Apple.

For this year's annual Harris Poll, Harris Interactive says the survey responses were unaided and a list of the brand names was not presented to the respondents. This means the folks who took time out from surfing for porn or betting on unregulated (but totally honest, really!) Internet gambling sites to participate in the survey had to think up brand names all on their own - without the help of pop-up or banner ads.

Perhaps not surprisingly given the composition of the Internet-savvy respondent pool, five of the top-10 brands in the survey were conusmer electronics product companies. Automobile manufacturers scored three mentions while consumer and packaged goods sellers received two. Two brands - Microsoft and General Motors - dropped off the list this year. (And that was before the EU's recent ruling against Microsoft.) Several brands received lots of mentions but couldn't make the cut: Chevrolet, Panasonic, Pepsi Cola, Nike, and Maytag.

This year's winners are:

1. Sony
2. Dell
3. Coca-Cola
4. Toyota
5. Ford
6. Honda
7. Hewlett Packard
8. General Electric
9. Kraft Foods
10. Apple

Interestingly, HD DVD-backer Toshiba is nowhere to be found in the Harris Poll's top-10 list. Could this be the extra edge Blu-ray needs to crush HD DVD, or will the results be just another plaque on the walls at Sony USA's headquarters? Will more Blu-ray Disc players be delayed? Will Toshiba decide to lose even more money on HD DVD? Do any of the people who participated in this survey care?