Apple still tops for customer satisfaction

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 19 February 2009 08:20

IT Industry - Market

Dell's downward trend since 2006 is continuing. While it got a pre-Christmas boost (especially in terms of desktop buying intentions), both desktop and laptop intentions fell 2 percentage points to 32 percent and 26 percent respectively.

But all that just shows how the market is likely to be divided up. What's happening to the size of the cake.

Put simply, it's still shrinking. "Only 4% of respondents say they’ll buy a desktop in the next 90 days – 1-pt less than in our January 2009 survey. In addition, just 6% say they'll buy a laptop – unchanged from previously," observed ChangeWave officials.

Looking at consumer electronics spending generally, those expecting to spend less outnumber those planning to spend more by nearly four to one.

Be warned that the ChangeWave survey respondents are drawn from a specific pool "of 20,000 highly qualified business, technology, and medical professionals – as well as early adopter consumers – who work in leading companies of select industries."

That makes it difficult to extrapolate the findings to the wider population. These individuals presumably have higher than average incomes, and it's a bit of a stretch to assume that they are just as fearful of losing their jobs as the average US worker.