(Credit:
Dong Ngo/CNET)
Apple fanboys, I have something for you.
According to data released by Forrester Research on Friday, during 2008 Apple enjoyed a decisive lead in the firm's Customer Experience Index (or CxPi). In short, this means Apple is supposedly the most lovely PC maker in the world, while Dell is the worst.
Forrester conducted its survey in October 2008 by asking 4,564 U.S. consumers about their interactions with a variety of companies, gauging the usefulness, usability, and enjoyability of those experiences. Based on these consumer responses, the firm calculated the CxPi for 113 firms in 12 different industries, including PC makers.
The ratings were compiled based on the answers to the following three questions: How effective was the company at meeting your needs? How easy was it to work with this firm? And how enjoyable were the interactions? Participants selected responses to these queries from a five-point scale. The individual indexes were calculated by taking the percentage of consumers who selected one of the top two points and subtracting from that the percentage of consumers who selected one of the bottom two points.
The research firm concluded in its report that Apple--whose rating is 80 percent, which is 14 points higher than that of the next firm on the list, Gateway--is the only PC vendor that earned a rating of "good"; the rest, including Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, and Dell ended up with designations of either "OK" or "Poor." Apple's reported "ease of use" largely helped it take the lead.
... Read moreOnline retail growth will slow for the first time this holiday season as a result of the weak economy, according to a new report from Forrester Research.
The market research firm estimates that $44 billion will be spent online by consumers during the holiday season; that's up 12 percent from last year, but it's the slowest rate of growth for online retail to date.
It's important to note that the Forrester report refers specifically to e-commerce, not to the hordes of people who show up at Best Buy at 5 a.m. for Black Friday deals. But the slowed growth probably is more reflective of the economy in general, not of an aversion to shopping on the Web--that's because Forrester also found that a weak economy gives incentives to shop online.
For example, 48 percent of those surveyed said they believe that they could find better deals on the Web versus in stores, up from 41 percent last year. And 36 percent said high gas prices would induce them to shop online, up from 22 percent in 2007.
It's taken 27 years to reach 1 billion PCs in use, and market researchers say it will take only five to reach the next billion.
Forrester Research is set to release a report Monday titled, "Worldwide PC Adoption Forecast to 2015," saying that many of those next billion will be used by first-time PC users in emerging nations like Brazil, Russia, India and China. At least 775 million new PCs will be in use in those countries by 2015, according to Forrester.
Not only is access to computers beneficial to those users, it also will represent a big bump in sales for PC manufacturers and sellers. Though the computer industry can still profit from selling replacement machines to existing users, the big money to be made is in the far greater number of users who have never owned one.
There are, of course, drawbacks in entering new markets, the report warns. Computer sellers in mature markets can count on a fairly predictable cycle of PC buying, but untapped markets are hardly as predictable and vendors will likely need to work together to scale production appropriately over the next decade, says Forrester.
Additionally, at least part of the bump in PC ownership and use will be due to programs like One Laptop Per Child, Microsoft's Unlimited Potential, Intel's World Ahead, and AMD's 50X15, which aim to bring low-cost computing to underprivileged students and developing countries.
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