Microsoft, as a Brand, Loses Ground
Tagged with: branding • microsoft • technology
In my work as an IT professional I have been seeing this for some time. Microsoft is not the ubiquitous presence it used to be. Windows operating systems have their place and will be around for a long time, however, more and more IT departments, faced with tight budgets, are looking at more open source and free software solutions. When I started in my current position we had seven Windows 2000 servers handling newsletters and other mailings. I was able to convert two of them to Ubuntu Linux servers online with Postfix. Those two servers now do the work of the seven and they do it better and faster.
That was just one example of a free software solution replacing a proprietary Microsoft solution. There are more alternatives every month. When Microsoft embraces the idea of "forced obsolescence" the way it has with Vista they are bound to take a hit in people’s opinions. There is a reason places like Tiger Direct are doing a brisk trade in older models of PC’s and refurbished units that run Windows XP Home or Pro.
The company where I work has purchased fifteen desktop computers with Windows XP Professional since December of 2007.
When the alternative either something like this: Intel Pentium 4 2.80GHz, 512MB RAM, 40GB HDD, DVDRW, 10/100 LAN, Windows XP Professional for $249.99 or a Vista Business machine that will provide the same work experience for easily twice the price its easy to see why Microsoft is not making anyone jump for joy.
I know I write about Linux a lot, and some people know that if Linux were not an option I would be a Mac user. But I also try not to sound like a knee jerk MS/Windows basher. As you can see from my Yahoo! Answers history, I spend a lot of time helping Windows users and I realize that Windows is the best solution for many people and many businesses. There are things I like about Microsoft products, but most of the them have existed since Windows XP was released over half a decade ago and the rest came with Office 2003 five years ago. Unless Microsoft starts getting more creative and comes up with new and innovative features that people can’t find in Linux or OSX, their decline is sure to continue.
From Study sees Microsoft brand in sharp decline
According to the CoreBrand Power 100 2007 study, which polled about 12,000 U.S. business decision-makers, Microsoft dropped from number 12 in the ranking of the most powerful U.S. 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, said James Gregory, CEO of CoreBrand.
CoreBrand measures brand power using four criteria. It first rates the familiarity of a company’s brand. Once a company has a certain level of familiarity, they are ranked according to three "attributes of favorability": overall reputation, perception of management and investment potential, Gregory said. While Microsoft’s brand is still eminently recognizable, the company is declining in all three favorable attributes, he said.
Gregory said that a decline in and of itself is not indicative that a company is losing its mindshare or reputation among customers. However, what’s significant in Microsoft’s case is that the decline has been consistent over a number of years, and has plunged dramatically in a brief time.
I agree with your thinking on this. It is hard for the average user to get away from Microsoft, though. I have never looked back after ditching IE for Firefox, but I think IE still has the majority market share. Three of our 4 computers have XP and the other has Vista. I hate Vista. I think MS might have done as much as anything else they have done to shoot themselves in the foot when they came out with Vista. It stinks almost as bad as the factory farming I rant about in my last post. And with the stress I deal with anytime I have to do something on the Vista computer, Vista is probably as unhealthy for us as the factory farmed hogs!
-Will
Will’s last blog post..Most Modern Farming Methods Stink!
Will, it was Vista specifically that I was taking about when I suggested that Microsoft had embraced “forced obsolescence”. I have lost track of the number of friends, family, and colleagues who have purchased new machines that shipped with Vista and have been confronted with the option of either downgrading to XP or adding RAM to get their NEW computer up to the speed of their old one.
My current PC shipped with Vista and instead of just blowing it away when I installed Linux I set it up as a dual boot so I could play with Vista and see what all the positive and negative fuss was about. Vista did help convince me that most Windows users could switch to Mac OSX or Linux without too much fuss. My main argument against that position in the past was based on the fact that Windows versions maintained a certain level of continuity in how it operates from the user perspective. They have often made big “under the hood” changes while leaving the user interface alone so people easily adapted to new versions. Vista changed all that. Its confusing, kludgey, non-intuitive, and seems to have made major changes for no apparent reason.
I spent ten minutes making mine look and act like XP or windows 2000 and it was fine then, but most people I know would not have been able to do that without asking for help.
I read this last night and thought - “how timely!”
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LINUX_PCS?SITE=COBOU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Yeah great article! We were just talking at work today about how it would be hard to convert “low skilled” Windows users to Linux if they have that self imposed attitude of “I suck at computers” since people like that can be resistant to new ideas and training. However, if you gave me a person who had never used a computer, I could have them up and running and using the Internet and email far faster with Linux than I could with Vista or even XP.