Our readers have been selecting the AMD company as a brand of the year for four years already. High performance and relatively inexpensive processors from this company are very popular among many users and fans of this brand. As far as we can notice, such users are the majority among our readers. Over seven hundred readers voted for this brand, which is 67.7% of the total number of voters. That's almost the same number of votes as were given to AMD last year. This company does not already feature that impressive 10% gain demonstrated in 2002. On the whole, the company retains its "almost 70%" and Intel seems to have to take special steps to attract a larger part of our audience. Remember that in 2001 AMD won 70.6% of votes.

To our mind, Intel deserves the "iXBT Brand" title, even if it's only silver. Anyway, this corporation is a CPU trendsetter and is the only reference-point for many companies both in technologies and in management, business development and partner relations. Perhaps, if Intel offered prices comparable with its competitor, the share of voters for this company would have been considerably larger. But now it has only a tad more than thirty percents of voters.

GlacialTech can boast of attractive prices at moderate noise levels in most models from this company. These features attracted 21.5% of voters.

ThermalTake is an old-timer on the coolers market. A wide range of products and solutions for any CPU types allowed the company to take only the third place with its 1367 votes.

Many people try to buy so called "original" Samsung memory modules, as only in this case they think they can get high-quality products worthy of the "iXBT Brand" title. 2530 (22.9%) voters stick to this opinion, but it allows Samsung to occupy only the second line of our poll.

ASUSTeK, offering high performance and reliable motherboards, systematically grows the number of its fans. It has conquered 43.9% of votes (4963 people), thus increasing its result by more than 9% in comparison with the previous year. Remember that in 2002 this company had only 22% of our readers' votes.

EPoX cannot boast of increased votes number for its brand. Nevertheless, this company has steadily taken the second place for the third year already, which speaks of the high trust our readers put into the products from this company.

Gigabyte usually follows right on the heels of ASUSTeK and the world sales volume of its products confirms this order of things. But our readers put this brand only on the third place – 1430 votes. It's hard to say why EPoX won greater recognition among our readers than this respected company. But the fact remains: in comparison with the previous year, Gigabyte has lost almost 6% of iXBT.com audience votes. While in 2001 Gigabyte took the second place with its 18.4%.

Each year the company demonstrates its superiority over its closest competitor. The year before last ATI's victory was not impressive, because the closest competitor (NVIDIA) was short of just one percent to replace ATI on the first place. Last year ATI made a noticeable dash, having won sympathies of 70.2% voters, and that result was almost 30% higher than in the previous year! This year the breakaway from the closest competitor is not that considerable, but over a thousand of votes is a telling argument.

NVIDIA products have always been powerful solutions. The launch of the sixth series of chips consolidated the company's position on the market, but this brand still obviously lacked something to overcome its competitor. Perhaps some people are right to think that the launch of Half Life 2 supported by ATI, which is more successful than DOOM III, played its role. Perhaps the recent release of X850XT scored ATI additional points. But one thing is clear: ATI will have to work hard the next year to retain its leadership.

As in case with the motherboards, Gigabyte has lost about 3% in video cards in comparison with the previous year, having reached the 7.9% mark. These results allow the company to take only the bronze.

This year NEC managed to push the former leader (TEAC) from the podium. Last year we noticed the dropping curve of trust to the TEAC brand. As a result, inexpensive but rather reliable and functional NEC drives brought this company 22.1% of votes and the right to take the first place.

52.2%, 30.5% and now – 16.7%: that's how the TEAC branding developed among our audience. Though, if you remember not that distant a past – TEAC drives used to successfully replace expensive Plextor drives and the trust level for this brand was quite impressive.

Deposit obtained many years ago still serves Plextor well. Even when the market seems to offer no Plextor CD-RW or CD-ROM, this brand is considered the best by 1373 people, that is 12.3% of all voters.

Over one third of voters said that NEC is the brand of the year in terms of DVD recorders. This is not surprising. The same three criteria: "affordable, reliable, performance" that made NEC the leader last year with its 23.1%, have brought the company success this year as well.

Plextor was short of 23 votes to be able to push TEAC down. It managed to do it this year. 12.2% (1321 votes) and the second rating in our poll.

Another big player on the media market – TDK – has earned the trust of 16.9% of voters, while the last year this figure was 20.3%.

Perhaps the main phenomenon of our poll. TEAC has never been that noticeable on the optical media market. At least on the Russian market. The only sound explanation we can give for this fact is that our readers liked those discs bundled with retail TEAC drives. That's why 847 votes (8.2%) and the third place is for TEAC.

Western Digital is the age-long competitor of Seagate. Having evaluated the tendency, you will see that Seagate has nothing to be afraid of these days. In comparison with the previous year WD even slowed down a little and lost about 3%, which were obviously added to the assets of the competitor.

Samsung has been developing rather dynamically on the hard disks market, but still not that successfully as was predicted for the Korean company by marketing guys. Though, Samsung had an opportunity to outrun WD, being short of just 1.3% or 154 votes. If the tendency remains, the next year we may see a new silver winner.

Integrated audio solutions are increasingly popular. According to our readers, NVIDIA achieved the best results in this sphere. That's the idea of 4569 readers or 43.3%, which is less by almost 11% than the last year results.

A comparatively new player on the integrated audio market – Realtek – has made a good start in its history of our poll. 17.6% users voted for this company.

Last year C-Media chips were acknowledged the best by a considerable part of our audience as well, but they comprised a good quarter of all voters then. But now, like Realtek, C-Media gained 17.6% votes, having lost only two votes to the former. That's why we decided that C-Media should also be awarded the title of the silver brand of the year.

Considering the fact that the other brands didn't manage to scrape even 5% votes, it would have been groundless to reward them with silver or bronze with these results.

SVEN has been the leader of our poll for three years running already. A snug part of the company's success is due to the SVEN-Audio brand manufacturing Hi-Fi componentry. At the same time, this year the company managed to "scrape" only 29.7% votes, while the last year this company was preferred by 41.8% iXBT.com readers participating in the poll, that's two percents more than in 2002.

It's hardly probable that the important role in the loss of SVEN scores is played by Creative, who scored 19% votes, while in the most successful 2003 year this company gained 32.1% votes.

Repeating the last year's success, Canon has again reached the top with its 36.1% votes (3851 people). Canon is recognized and used by many professionals as the most functional cameras, our poll is just another proof of that fact.

Nikon has also weakened a little, it attracted only 13.8% of votes, which actually does not close out its chance to rise to the second place next year.

Perhaps it would have been strange to see another brand in this place. Samsung monitors have always been deservedly popular due to their praiseworthy image quality and moderate prices. 2943 (27.4%) users think that Samsung is worthy of the "iXBT Brand" title this year.

Joint venture NEC/Mitsubishi offers high quality models under the NEC brand. Our readers already appreciated the quality by raising NEC to the second place from the fourth position last year. 13.8% (1482 votes) – that's a real growth of the brand.

The Korean giant still pays enough attention to the CRT market by offering high quality and inexpensive solutions. Samsung got even a tad more votes in this nomination than for LCD monitors. 2998 votes or 28% voters selected this brand as the leader.

Our poll has not made out a certain leader between HP and Epson. Both companies scored almost 38% votes each. In this connection we award both companies with the silver brand title. Let's hope that the next year will help users feel the advantage of one company over the other.

Logitech with its reliable, functional and stylish mice gained 6333 users (55.5%). Though this brand has lost some of its popularity percentagewise, this company is obviously growing its presence and reputation on the market. And we are glad to congratulate this company with another "iXBT brand" 2004 title.

And, correspondingly, Genius moved one line down, giving up its place to A4Tech. Perhaps the times of "Genius is Brand #1 in the world" are gone. Only 11.9% of voters selected Genius as their favorite.

Besides its successful mice models, Logitech manufactures keyboards equally successful in all respects. Over a third of our readers (38.3%) preferred this manufacturer. Logitech demonstrates noticeable growth in this nomination compared to previous years.

A year ago just two votes allowed Mitsumi to take the second line. This year Mitsumi lost its advantage and was outscored by Genius by almost 1.5%.

Two years ago ASUS presented its first handhelds on CeBIT. No one thought at that time that this company would seriously press palmOne in our poll and would take the second place with its 17.5% of readers' votes. As a result it gets the silver brand.

Modems are probably the most conservative industry and ZyXEL continues to offer analog solutions for the Russian market. That's why it has won in this nomination, in our opinion. ZyXEL gained 4391 votes of our readers – this is over forty percents of all voters.

U.S.Robotics modems have been a high quality standard in Russia for a long time. Plenty of firmware versions, detailed documentation and command descriptions allowed to configure these modems properly even in the worst phone lines with step-by-step exchange. Times change, but U.S.Robotics modems are still selling well. 26.3% of our readers would like to see this company as a brand of the year in this nomination.