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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."
You mean, they put out a new version of their main product, it was widely ridiculed, and their brand suffered as a result? Who would have guessed!?
Today's forecast calls for light showers with a high chance of flying chairs. Seriously, though, I used to doubt the power of "branding," but the more I learn about the average consumer (disappointing as it may be), the more I understand why companies care about this kind of thing.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
I have a friend who got a Macbook the other day. She said it was really awesome. I was trying to figure out why she liked it so much, but when I asked her she said, "everything is so easy to use!"
That seemed a little strange to me, since it usually takes a little while to get used to a new interface. Then she said, "My boss and coworkers are so jealous."
That's how you know Apple has turned the corner. When suddenly random people can become cool for owning a Mac. Compare that to a few years ago, my brother mentioned in his university classes he was the only one who had a Mac, and people gave him strange looks. You had to actively go against the flow to get an Apple in those days. Now the flow is starting to head in that direction.
(Heads off to buy more Apple stock).
Qxe4
Can someone explain what "brand power" is, and how you can possibly measure it? I know that "branding" is important, but ranking companies by "brand power" seems like useless information being created by "CoreBrand". I'm guessing CoreBrand didn't make it very high on the list themselves...
Clovis
^ Clovis, look! It's that guy you are!
Mike Rowe Soft.
It's a dirty job.
corebrand? never heard of em'
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.
Microsfot has forgotten, like many other corporations, is that all one needs to focus on is making a quality product. If you do that, all other things, quartely earnings, shareholder returns, marketing, ect, will take care of themselves natually.
Microsoft may be down quite a bit, but Apple is not even on that list at all.
IBM is at spot #18, which is quite surprising really - as far as I noticed there are no other software companies that high on the list at all. Most of the top 25 seems to be car companies, food/drinks/restaurant franchises and the like.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
I'm sure unfavorable reception to Vista doesn't help, but it's not like MS hasn't weathered that before. (ME anyone?) I would suspect brand dilution is more to blame, as they branch out more and more. At one point, people might just have thought of their software, but now there's a whole slew of different products that may bring their reputation down. Users who prefer the iPod to the Zune, or the Wii to the Xbox 360, or now see Google as the big cheese in the online world may all have a less favorable impression of MS as a whole.
hot foreign sheep.
Are these guys still around? I remember using a BASIC interpreter of theirs in the early 1980s.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.
So, Microsoft ought to be selling a decent version of Windows by 2018?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Microsoft comments on their branding decline in Sharp Consumer Electronic products.
Saying " our Products sales are doing so well that we can drop Sharp Consumer Electronics from our certified MS OEM's list.
"When you see something decline with increasing velocity, it's a concern". Especially when it's a chair making its way down from office building above you.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
- Coca-Cola (same rank as last year)
- Johnson & Johnson (same rank as last year)
- Hershey Foods (up from number 8 last year)
- Harley-Davidson (up from number 6 last year)
- Hallmark Cards (same as last year)
- Campbell Soup (up from 10 last year)
- UPS (down from 4 last year)
- FedEx (down from 7 last year)
- Colgate-Palmolive (up from 12 last year)
- Starbucks (up from 13 last year)
- PepsiCo (down from 3 last year)
This list is measured from a telephone interview among business leaders. Their scores were weighted higher if they had more familiarity with the companies in question. They were rated based on the Brand's overall reputation, perception of management, and investment potential. Note that these are corporate brands, not consumer brands. Apple is not on the list, in case anyone was wondering.Qxe4
(Heads off to buy more Apple stock).
While I acknowledge others' pervious predictions of rough sailing ahead for Apple have generally not come to reality (since the return of Jobs), your tale leads me in the opposite direction.
It reminds of the story of Joe Kennedy knowing it was time to get out of the stock market when he was getting stock tips from the shoe shine boy. Part of Apple's appeal was its status as an outsider. Random people can't become cool for owning a Mac; the point of being cool is you're not just another random person.
With apologies to Yogi, are we reaching a point where no one will buy an Apple because everyone's buying Apple?
This is just further evidence of Microsoft's imminent defeat at the hands of open source software. Microsoft is terrified of Linux, and it has been the primary cause of many of their recent screw ups which are driving people to Linux in droves.
Just the other night I was installing Ubuntu onto the computer of a freind's daughter, and I explained to her the benefits of open source software, and how it is inherently superior to closed source software.
Please forgive me for going a little OT here, but, at one point she suggested that Photoshop was better then GIMP. I tried to hold in the laughter, but my mouth was full of cheetos, and I spluttered some soggy crumbs over her keyboard. I used my Ubuntu t-shirt to wipe most of them off, and when I looked up, she was staring at me, and making eye contact. Does this mean she likes me?
I guess I just don't understand the list of apples and oranges and cars from the article. It just seems to me that if you're going to compare companies they should be at least in similar markets. Sure if you're doing a who's top earner then I can see throwing everyone in the same basket, but then you'd also want to get more accurate information and not just base findings off of a phone survey, which to me is just crap info.
Ave Molech Setting
#4 is Harley-Davidson, which is listed in the "Hotel & Entertainment" category. Are there Harley Hotels I'm unaware of? Shouldn't they be in "Motor Vehicles"?
I have a hard time telling here whether you're serious or not, but really, more people hate Microsoft than love any alternative. Most casual computer users I have met (therefore I very carefully make no broad sweeping statements about "all" of any population of people), gripe constantly about Windows but use it anyway.
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.
I wonder if this is less a matter of Microsoft Vs. Apple, or the lack of quality in Vista, but more a matter of MSN Vs. Google
I don't believe you, I'm here for a seat on the secret spaceship.
which is totally what she said
Hahahahahahaha.... they might be if you could actually trust them to run reliably. A lot of people don't ride their harleys to the bike rallies: they drive their car and cart the harley in a trailer. One of the reasons that's so is because riding a motorcyle long distance is very tiring, the other is the rate of failure of Harley's is atrocious.
I can't believe I'm doing this, but if Harley Davidson is ranked number 4, then this study has little or no bearing on the reliability of products the company makes. At best, it's showing what the public perceives the reliability of the products the company makes.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Apple is not even on the entire 100 list. What's with that. Apple has to be in the top ten.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
I'd like to point out that this study is pretty much worthless. I like to hate Ms as much as the next guy but this study shows a slippage against other brands *IN OTHER INDUSTRIES*. This is comparing Microsoft and Coke? WTF. Maybe some of these other brands surged in popularity. Or maybe computer industry in general is viewed less favorably. This would be much more useful if it was focused a specific industry.
To see a list of brands owned by Johnson & Johnson: http://www.jnj.com/product/brands/index.htm
Chances are you have heard of at least some of these products (e.g. Tylenol, KY, Rolaids... the list is long).
Support a true independent artist - Leila Lopez
how Microsoft refuses to play well with others. That is my biggest beef with them on a corporate level. We are currently trying to integrate a few windows machines into our all mac/linux network, and it is painful. There are all sorts of "security policies" that need to be fiddled with because they aren't the same, XP gets upset if you have more than one domain controller on different domains it seems, and it doesn't even support NFS....NFS a protocol that will be celebrating its 20th birthday next year, isn't supported by Windows XP. Can you name me one other major PC operating system that doesn't support NFS out of the box? Any Mac box can be an NFS server or client, ditto for Linux, BSD, Solaris etc. But since it wasn't invented at Microsoft Microsoft doesn't consider it to be important, esp. since they could use their lack of NFS support to get you to buy a Microsoft server product that does the same thing but isn't nearly as secure.
SSH, LDAP, etc. the list of technologies that almost every other OS on the planet supports but XP doesn't(I don't know about Vista, but it's not like XP is that old). Microsoft's client OSs seem to have features that try to force you into buying Microsoft server OSs. Samba is great, and I certainly don't want to denigrate the brilliant people who write the stuff, but it shouldn't be necessary. Maybe back in 1996, when most business networks outside the megacorps consisted of a dumb hub with very little centralized management Windows wasn't all that bad, but the problem for Redmond is that the rest of the world moved on and they didn't. They still seem to think its a Microsoft only world, but the rest of the world thinks differently.
Monstar L
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.
Actually, I have. Sad as that may sound.
E.g., when some people I knew switched the whole company from WordPerfect to MS Word, much against my zealotry at the time. The fact is, the first attempts at WP For Windows sucked hairy donkey balls. Word might not have been a shiny gold nugget, but compared to WP it was at least like polished lead compared to a turd.
E.g., Windows itself gained a lot of market share fast back in the day, because the 386 version was pretty much the only thing that combined (A) preemptive multitasking, at least for legacy apps, (B) a GUI, unpolished as that might have been, and (C) compatibility with those legacy apps. And maybe (D) a price you can actually afford, as opposed to buying an ultra-expensive, and just as proprietary, Unix for that PC. There have been other attempts at one of the three, but they typically missed the other two.
Yes, I know, _nowadays_ Linux exists which fits all the bills and is a viable choice and all. But back then the competition actually had worse products than MS, sad as that may sound. Who was better than Windows? GEM with its max 4 windows and no support for using memory over 640k? The text-mode-only task-switching of DesqView? (Even DesqView/X was too little, too late. Way too late.) OS/2? Heh. Trust me, I used all those, I even was an OS/2 fanboy at one point, but looking back, I can see how Windows won on its own merits back then.
The last genuine competitor to Windows was IBM's OS/2, and even that was a sad story. For a start it was a story of corporate schizophrenia, where half of IBM didn't want to use or sell the OS that the other half created and/or endorsed. But it was also a story of IBM ignoring the users' grievances. Year after year people complained that a single mis-behaved or crashed application can lock up the common event queue, and thus the whole computer. And year after year IBM stuck to its guns that that's the right way to do things, and generally STFU you bloody user. It was a story of such fuck-ups as IBM launching a version of OS/2 with much fanfare, and then discovering that if you were upgrading from a previous version, it would fuck up the config so badly that your newly installed OS wouldn't boot. (Or not make it to the desktop.) It was a story of IBM developer suport being non-existent. Much as we laugh at "Uncle Fester" Balmer's developers dance on the stage, it was a whole other message than IBM's. IBM at felt a lot more like "fuck off and stop trying to steal the market for our own apps for OS/2." Etc. And IBM lost. Why? Because, bloody sad as it sounds, their stuff was actually worse than MS's.
E.g., I remember being one of the last Netscape fanboys in a world which was quickly going IE, and Netscape's Mozilla team had gone in dada land for years reinventing skinned widget libraries instead of making a browser. The fact that everyone kept pointing out was that IE was head and shoulders above the buggy (and rapidly getting outdated) mess that was Nescape 4.x. Both being free, people preferred the MS one as (subjectively) better.
Etc.
I can even tell you the mistake you're making. You're seeing just the years after they became a monopoly, and when they actually could push people to buy just for compatibility sake. But you forget their years of actually fighting uphill in those markets. Before you could have people telling each other "get Word already because we all have it", you first have to convince enough people to ditch WordStar and WordPerfect, _in_ _spite_ of the fact that everyone else has them.
Don't get me wrong, that doesn't excuse MS's monopolistic tactics or anything. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying you first have to have enough of a foothold before you can apply them. MS's monopoly isn't based on just one thing, it's an interlocking porcupine of pieces which need each other. It only starts working at all after you have at least a few such pieces which are the de-facto standard. And there must have been _some_ merit involved in getting at least those ramm
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I don't know what kind of evening you have planned, but count me out.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Oil out of babies?
For some reason, Windows users feel happy after they fix their computer, not pissed.
I believe thats the primary reason behind Windows still having popularity.
You see it all the time.
E.g. Printer wont print just before something urgent is due.
They are annoyed when it occurs but are happy when they fix it (usually by rebooting or restarting the app).
I've been watching people using Windows and most of the time they dont even realise when it crashes.
Its just automatic for them to reboot/restart the program and they edit what happened out of their memory.
I've actually had to tell someone that their computer crashed because they didnt notice.
They have been taught that all computers are like that and they just accept it.
Whenever I make Windows crash (very often with Explorer) I get really pissed.
Which is why I make a point on not using Windows unless absolutely necessary.
Microsoft makes money off of defense contracts and their contractors. You can be assured that the Green Zone is a Microsoft zone. The Business Software Alliance sues the customers of Microsoft by proxy. So its more than incompetence, Microsoft is the computer face of Brand America... and we know that brand has been in free fall for some time now. Apple seems more international, and less Amero-centric.
There are no absolutes.
With a distro like Ubuntu do those 99% need to deal with config files, CLI, and compiling from source?
Seriously, using Ubuntu on this machine I rarely if ever have to go to any of those above. Almost anything I could want (except high-end games) is up on Apt/Synaptic with a decent summary, push button installation/un-installation/updates. Configuration is much the same way, with far more options available through nice gui menus than are ever available to the Windows user.
Even those games that I have for linux such as Second Life and Eve Online have been push button to install. Sure with SL I did have to make my own menu button for it but that was filling in a gui form menu and was not strictly necessary.