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Microsoft Brand In Sharp Decline
Amy Bennett writes "A recent poll of about 12,000 US business decision-makers by market researcher CoreBrand found that Microsoft's brand power has taken a dive over the past four years. According to the study, Microsoft dropped from number 12 in the ranking of the most powerful US company brands in 2004 to number 59 last year. In 1996, the company ranked number 1 in brand power among 1,200 top companies in about 50 industries. The CEO of CoreBrand said: 'When you see something decline with increasing velocity, it's a concern.' To add some historical context, IBM suffered a much faster and more severe decline in brand power in the early 1990s and it took them 10 years to rebuild the brand's reputation."
In my opinion they need to stop trying to take over the internet and look internally to focus and improve their core product lines. The release of vista and its lack of acceptance in the business sector was a huge blow to their reputation. I personally am aware of several VERY large companies that were considering Vista a year ago and have completely turned 180 degrees towards open source. I dont know how far MS thinks they are going to get by forcing Vista down the corporate throat.
Im not a microsoft hater, in fact I depend on MS products to make a living, but I know Im not alone on this sentiment.
The reality is, being cool is about being cool. Can't be defined. Any attempts to do so peg you as uncool, and you'll probably never know why.
I'm an educator and work with kids (and some university students) all day. Ask anyone aged 10-25 what Microsoft is known for and they'll say Xbox (or Xbox 360). Sit kids in front of a Mac and they'll start messing with it; sit kids in front of a Windows box and they'll start messing with that. They don't "see" the operating system or the cognitive dissonance of the Office ribbon... They're still platform agnostic. And Microsoft is counting on that.
We associate Microsoft with "Computers, Peripherals and Computer Software", we hate their stuff, and we take glee in the decline of the Evil Empire that brought us Windows, IE, and OOXML. If I were to be associated with the Vista debacle and ActiveX exploits forever, I'd want my brand to die, too!
Don't be fooled by the article however, Microsoft still has the mindshare of future consumers - they're the cool company that brought us the Xbox, Xbox Live, and the Halo franchise... In another 20 years, wouldn't you want to buy technology from the guys who brought you all the great memories from your childhood??
Apple went from a declining "Computers, Peripherals and Computer Software" company to a hot mainstream company, and used the iPod halo effect to come back into their old, failed "Computers, Peripherals and Computer Software" market, hotter than ever. Microsoft is simply stealing a page from Apple and guaranteeing its survival for the next 20 years, when the Xbox gamers of today take their turn at being CIOs and CTOs.
People don't always necessarily go for quality. If that were the case, McDonald's and a bunch of other businesses that turn out what are essentially low-quality, cheap or just plain mediocre products would be out of business.
Some people want a brand because it represents an attitude -- like I'm different. Think of Apple's Think Different campaign. People bought Macs just to be different -- they didn't care about features in the OS or available software, they just wanted a different kind of computer.
In the end the average Joe Sixpack buys what he finds familiar. He doesn't make buying decisions based on facts or critical thinking or anything related to clear, precise, logical thought. Kinda scary when you think about it.
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The problem with Microsoft isn't Vista or Clippy or XBOX360; those less-than-good products are just the result of the arrogance that runs through everything they do. They've turned out a few good products, too.
If you need to point a finger at them, how about pointing at - well, how about their anti-trust conviction? Did you notice how they changed their ways after this conviction? No? That's what's wrong with Microsoft. It's the anti-competitive way they insure that every new computer has Windows installed. It's the anti-competitive way they bundle other products. It's all the companies who were crushed by Microsoft - but not before Microsoft "liberated" the intellectual property from those doomed companies.
How about their shrink-wrap license agreements that they use to bind you - but if you disagree and try to use the remedy they've provided (return product for refund) you'll find that's virtually impossible to do? How about the way they're currently trying to subvert the ISO standardization process?
Remember when XP went out the door with a list of 50,000 bugs still unresolved? They're still sticking band-aids on it - but rather than complete that product they're off to yet another (arguably less functional) product which was also rushed out long before it was ready.
For those who want to defend this miserable excuse for a software company, here's a question for you: name 10 technologies that Microsoft has shipped that were invented in-house by Microsoft.
This study has nothing to do with reliability, only brand recognition. Regardless of Harley's reliability, they are a very, very widely recognized brand name.
I think Microsoft's problems run much deeper than just Vista. Microsoft has completely lost sight of how to create innovative products that people enjoy using. When they can't seem to innovate, they backtrack and try to compete with existing products. Only it takes them so long the thing they're competing with becomes deeply entrenched in the market and has become a de-facto standard. Examples: TiVo and UltimateTV. iPod and Zune. It surprises me that XBox has done as well as it has. Microsoft has been in the mobile phone business for over 5 years. They've had all this time to refine PocketPC/Windows CE as a phone OS. Still, I don't know anyone who really loves Windows Mobile. It's functional but clunky. Yet Apple comes along and takes their first stab at a phone, it's a smash hit with people overall. Vista is just another example of how Microsoft just "doesn't get it". They keep changing things around in ways that just aren't better, especially for less technical people. They keep taking their common "standardized" UI elements away from their applications. That goes for other products too. The most basic UI staple - the menu bar, is now missing from Internet Explorer 7 and Word 2007 amongst others. i really used to be a fan of Microsoft's products, but not so much anymore.