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Sony More Trustworthy Than Microsoft

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the and-nintendo-too dept.

DesertBlade writes "Forrester Research examined the trust that American households place in PC and consumer electronics. Sony, Dell and Bose all recieved a ranking of A+ while Microsoft recieved a C (I know most of you would say it is closer to a F). "Microsoft faces big consumer defection risk. One measure of consumers' dissatisfaction with Microsoft is seen in the 5.4 million households that give it a brand trust score of 1 [distrust a lot] or 2 [distrust a bit]. Compared with all Microsoft users, these at-risk users have higher income, are much more likely to be male, and are bigger online spenders.(see endnote 7) These households know they run Microsoft software but would be just as happy to leave it behind -- if they could." Does Microsoft face that big of a risk?"

5 of 410 comments (clear)

  1. Dell received an A+? by flimflammer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I must say, I'm shocked, with all my personal experiances with them.

  2. Why is Apple's "brand potential" so low? by ereshiere · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Behind Dell, Gateway (?), IBM (!?)--who at home aspires to buy something from IBM?

  3. Sony & Dell? by rolfwind · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Neither of which earned my trust truth be told.

    Sony is obvious, but Dell, besides the lack of quality in certain parts (which could be directly correlated to cheap prices), loads their new computers with tons of bloatware - you have to sit there and remove programs for an hour to get the speed you expect from your new computer and then still, remnants are left.

    This might be standard among the big boys in the PC industry, but last time I got a Mac - I was pretty amazed by the lack of crap (wonders if that will change with Jobs being part-owner of Disney)....

  4. The Business Model keeps them Safe by Aqua04 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    You see, the problem is their amazing "toll bridge" business model. Sorry to repeat an old fact, but in 1997 Jeff Raikes described it in a letter to Warren Buffet, where he basically stated "What we have is a toll bridge, where every new PC has to pay a Microsoft fee." Back, then they got $45 for every PC license. On top of that they have their "finished goods" business that heavily relies on their entrenched Windows OS. That is an AWESOME fact, and an amazing lock in, which will be super hard to break unless they really, really fuck up their business relationships somehow.

    They don't even have to fuck up the technology that much. I mean look at the delayed Vista, its been five years and no one has been able to touch them. Microsoft knows that. That is why their software really only has to *just* work and *just* be useable enough. Their domination is based on that amazing business model they are in, nothing else.

    The question is what are YOU going to do about it ? Are you going to keep paying the fee ? If you're an OS maker, are you going to work, not only on the technology, but on the all important business relationships, including working on disrupting MS's relationships ?

  5. Re:Personally. by MemoryDragon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The main problem with Sony is twofold.
    a) Quality, they centralized their support structures with desastrous results. In the past a vendor network was making the support, and they got high ratings in quality (just like apple still does) The centralized support saved them money but they now have a lousy support reputation which kills off their sales. The vendors are not very eager to push their stuff as well, due to low margins, while sony still has high prices so no incentive to buy their stuff over the price point either.

    b) Sony media slowly kills sony electronics while small companies take over. Most of the idiocy hitting sony electronics came from sony media (DRM, strongly enforced region codes while chines play all under the sky players were sold for 50 bucks next), rootkits etc... This is all stuff coming from the movie division and is hitting the electronics division hard, really hard. The current event showint this is that their UMD disk now is partially declared dead as movie format, the UMD never could take over due to strongly enforced DRM and the price hike coming with it (Speaking of endless greed) which made it significantly more expensive than DVDs.