Apple's brand up, Microsoft's brand down
A group of international marketers cites Apple and Google as two of the top-four brands that they "can't live without." Microsoft? "Microsoft is the top brand they wanted to argue with and also the top name they wanted to rebrand."
In a separate survey of 12,000 US business people, Microsoft's "brand power" dropped from number one in 1996 to number 59 in 2008. That precipitous drop doesn't bode well, obviously:
...[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. "When you see something decline with increasing velocity, it's a concern," [the CEO of the surveying company] said.
The article goes on to point out several possible reasons for the decline, but I think it's an inevitable result of hoarding past monopolies without building a future in tomorrow's most relevant markets: Web and mobile. Indeed, Microsoft's hoarding of the past is precisely what keeps it from branding the future. Apple's surging brand value is precisely related to its stakes in the future.
Which billions do you want, Microsoft? Yesterday's or tomorrow's? It seems you can't have both.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Microsoft's problems is marketing and Vista (as well as Office 2007). Much like Palm is fighting a bad rep with its OS (even thought its very functional), MS is doing the same with Vista. From day one it's been a fight as the haters pounced on it. It certainly didn't help that Vista needed current computers to run as well as XP.
MS failed to educate the public on why Vista is better. They failed in making 20 versions of it. Although it includes some cool features, the average user knows hardly anything about them aside from it looks prettier. And that's key. MS should've just made XP look better and perhaps came out with Windows XP 2007 or something and just continue to work on Vista til they could really make it worthwhile and easier to market.
MS wrote the book on what not to do when issuing a new OS. Driver issues? Compatibility? Vendors going back to offering XP? What a disaster..
Office 2007 was a failure too with most I talk to. Who wants to relearn Word or Excel even if its supposedly more user friendly for those who never have used it? And a new file format too? (docx, xlsx, etc) That's just inviting trouble when sharing docs with the usual suspects who barely can turn on a computer in the first place. Office 2003 needed updating, sure, but keep it simple stupid.
MS just has a big fight on its hands as there are many out there who won't give em an inch. And with Vista marketing failures and office, MS gave em the gun.