“Apple’s image as an innovator and general leader of all things exciting has been assaulted of late. There are accusations that the company has lost it, that it’s dull, that its products are the same and old,” Chris Matyszczyk reports for CNET. “What, though, do real people think?”
“Apparently, they think the Apple brand delivers more than any other. In every product category in which Cupertino operate,” Matyszczyk reports. “Research consultancy Brand Keys has just released its 2017 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index. This seeks to find the ‘category drivers that engage customers, engender loyalty and drive real profits.’ It’s based on the views and emotions of 49,168 consumers aged between 16 and 65.”
“When it comes to the smartphone category, the top driver is Apple. In tablets, it’s Apple. In laptop computers, it’s Apple. Yes, this despite the launch of the somewhat deflating MacBook Pro. What about online music? Goodness me, it’s isn’t Spotify. It’s Apple Music,” Matyszczyk reports. “Even in the headphones product category, Apple-owned Beats ties with LG as the category driver.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Behold, the power of what Steve Jobs wrought; not easily diminished, but the potential is there given Apple’s recent and current trajectory.
Hopefully, Tim Cook remembers what Steve Jobs’ mentor Andy Grove said so well:
Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.
No comment needed.
Perfectly stated, MacDailyNews!
“Apple delivers best experience in every category, research says”
I guess that explains why Apple sales are crashing in every category!
Exceptional claims need exceptional proof.
Exceptional gaiety needs exceptional poof.
Bay area has it all.
Apple does not have the highest sales in “cheap crap full of malware”. Luckily.
Wow, this report really jackboots all the vomiting group think seemingly seeping through Apple news sites. I’m sure constructive criticism is helpful, but diatribes of disgust have fallen on deaf ears. This makes people who think the age of Apple is over look like a bunch of Google clown cars.
perhaps tim cook was distracted w/ space ship building details and was complacent because obama was president, now w/ a change in regime and trump explicitly saying things are going to change perhaps its time to use all that $$$$$$ to double down on robotic manufacturing
http://www.macworld.com/article/3048769/iphone-ipad/heres-how-long-it-takes-liam-to-disassemble-an-iphone.html
only question to be answered is what happens to the masses all around the world w/out marketable skill sets when robots do lots of the manufacturing
You mean the guys who never bothered with the real facts?
This is news to idiots only, the same idiots that believe that Trump will be the salvation of the little guy…
MDN, your caption is NOT what the research says. The research is about the leaders/market drivers in each category. Apple is the leader/market driver in most categories. Apple not even the leader/market driver in “every” category.
Besides, Apple does not provide the best experience in many categories anymore. Once it did in the specific areas in which it participated. Once it was the very best at what it did. You can go all the way back to the multi volume set of human interface and design books for the Mac. They led to such totally obvious things such as quitting anything was a command-q — as opposed to a control-x or control-q or control-e or several other variants that exist in the Windows world even today (but was way worse a couple decades ago). Other simple things like closing a window JUST closed that window, as opposed to closing the window sometimes closed just the window, sometimes closed the window and closed the application, and sometimes closed the window and opened another window in its place. Even Apple does not follow that simple rule anymore with its own applications.
Simple, straightforward and intuitive experiences for Apple products. That experience pattern has been fading for some time.
In the first few years under Ballmer Microsoft would have been the market leader/market driver in every category in which it participated, and we all know how that turned out. Similarly, in the first few years Sculley was in charge of Apple, Apple was considered the market leader/market driver for every market in which it participated, and we all know how that turned out.
But, as you, MDN, point out, if Apple does not start to fix this — and refresh its product lines to the current state-of-the-art and restore its user experience — then Apple itself will start to fade.
Hopefully 2017 won’t be a repeat of 1994 and 2018 won’t be a repeat of 1995. I’m hopeful Apple will turn it around, but I’m not foolish enough to be very confident it will happen.
… We know, we know. But clearly, Apple has lost considerable focus, that key word Steve Jobs drummed into his employee’s heads while he was around. Witness the state of the Mac.
Therefore, we the worshipers BITCH about it and demand better. That’s what Apple fanatics always do.