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."

Comments

Re:Interesting..

[l0ungeb0y]

Of course Apple isn't on the list, they make computers for fags and little girls.
However, if iPod were considered a brand, I bet it'd be in the top 20.

Re:You don't say...

[EddyPearson]

I disagree.

Linux has been around a long time, and it's still nowhere near ready to replace Windows on the desktop, say what you like, 99% of people can't deal with config files and CLI and compiling from source.

Microsoft should however be very worried about the trend toward online applications, Silverlight was too little too late and still isn't gaining much traction compared to Adobe Flex. Their monopoly on the desktop won't be challenged, it'll simply become less relevant, and when a user friendly OS DOES appear, then Microsoft will become a costly option with the same features.