Eye on Microsoft
About this Blog:
This is Shane O'Neill's blog about Microsoft's corporate strategy and its various software and services — the good, the bad and the ugly.
Surprise, Surprise: Microsoft Beats Apple in Consumer Survey
In an unexpected turn, Microsoft products rank higher than Apple and Sony in a new consumer electronics survey.
It's easy to assume that Apple is the greatest consumer electronics company in the known universe. But Mr. Jobs and company may be resting on their laurels these days, according to a new consumer electronics study.
The study, conducted by retail consulting firm Strategos and equities research firm wRatings, lists Apple as the number 10 most innovative consumer electronics company.
Surprisingly, Microsoft came in at number three behind LG and Nintendo. That's right, Microsoft just beat Apple in a consumer satisfaction survey. Who woulda thunk it?
"As Microsoft has done across many products and now with the Zune HD, listening to customers and improving from early mistakes can lead to winning products," says Peter Skarzynski, Managing Director at Strategos.
Slideshow: Windows 7 in Pictures: The Coolest New Hardware
"Innovation" has become a vague and overused marketing term. We all know the dictionary definition of innovation (the act of introducing something new, of being creative), but in the business and marketing world, it's used as a general description of ingenuity and success (I think).
The Strategos/wRating study measured "innovation" by asking 2,100 consumers and business executives to rate consumer electronics companies' products based on Usefulness, Quality, Simplicity, Coolness, Uniqueness, Variety and Competence.
The study cites that Microsoft's Zune HD, though not a market share killer, and also the Xbox 360 gaming console scored high in all categories. The iPod and iPhone did not score as well, most likely because consumers are so used to Apple products, the study concludes. Overall, Microsoft had a score of 84.6, and Apple's score was 82.0.
"Maybe Apple was hurt by its success — since iPods and iPhones are so mainstream, perhaps consumers don't see them as unique anymore," the study states. "Maybe other competitors have dramatically improved their innovation performance — indeed, the new Zune HD is cited as a far superior music player by many product reviewers."
Multi-purpose electronics maker LG, which manufactures mobile phones, flat-screen TVs and computer monitors, was number one, followed by Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. Other companies in the top 10 include Hitachi, Canon, Sharp and NetApp.
This is not the only disappointing ranking for Apple this week. In a similar study on laptop longevity based on 30,000 costumer experiences, Apple was fourth on the reliability scale behind Asus, Toshiba and Sony.
Shane O'Neill is a senior writer at CIO.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/smoneill. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter at twitter.com/CIOonline.
Previous Post: Microsoft's Ozzie on Smartphones: It's Not About the AppsNext Post: What Bing Can Learn from Google: Don't Piss Off Publishers
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
