Apple, Google and Symantec are among the high-technology companies with the most loyal customers, according to a new report based on data from early last year. The company conducted three separate studies looking at the Online Services, Computing, and Consumer Services sectors of the high technology industry, assessing various companies’ commitment to maximizing customer experience and driving revenue growth through customer loyalty.
Symantec?
I can only attribute that to a causal effect similar to the Stockholm Syndrome.
I don’t think that many Internet users nowadays even know that search engines other than Google exist. It is the default search option in many browsers (who remembers AltaVista or Excite?)
Ha! I’ll see your AltaVista and raise you one Webcrawler!
And I’ll infoseek your webcrawler.
And I’ll Hotbot your Lycos until you Yahoo!
…
This took a wrong turn somehow.
I think alot of people know of google since msn is the default engine in 90% of the worlds computers, saying otherwise is stupid. And there isnt any stockbroker that dont know of google by now, with their record earnings and value rise in stock. Apple? Well i understand that they have a loayal customer base. I bought my first osx86 mac a few days ago and i have never been using my computer this way since the glory days of the BeOS. My old macs was all Classic macs and an horrible experience to use, but i had to since the company apps only worked on mac. (and beos through sheepshaver) Thanks apple, you have gained another loyal customer.
Symantec? Well this one is a mysterium WTF? Does noone remeber the old versions of norton that pwned your computer totally? or the fabolously crappy “norton utillities for mac”? What was that app actually good for except taking up space and telling you that files were unrecoverable?
Well to be honest, the only computer company im truly loyal to is Palm.
GO GOOGLE!
Symantec? Well this one is a mysterium WTF? Does noone remeber the old versions of norton that pwned your computer totally?
Well maybe this survey is based on old data…y’know, how the Nobel prizes are given for some 20-year-old accomplishments so maybe, MAYBE, those were some very loyal Norton Commander users
I remember that turning a whole new light on DOS on my old 80286 
…is becoming scary. Seriously. They are implementing something new, like, every day that competes (well STOMPS) everyone else. It’s weird but I cannot remember when Google even came into being. I used to use AltaVista and then Yahoo for all my online searching…
Now everything is Google… altho’ I still have a Yahoo account.
Google couldn’t stomp anyone else outside of search if their life depended on it. Have you actually SEEN their market share ratings for their non-search products? Not nearly as high as Yahoo!, or even MSN for that matter. They’re in a throw crap at the wall and see what sticks phase….I doubt many of these products will even last.
Maybe!
Do you have any links to Google’s market share ratings? I’d like to read some more about it. Thanks!
All of them uses sutile lock-in schemes.
What are yu talking about?
What are the lock-in schemes?
Apple is the underdog with a very specific style that its customers almost always become enchanted with. Google is the new Apple. They are doing exactly what Microsoft is doing (going in every direction at once) – but they’re doing it at low cost and therefore low risk. More importantly for the topic of discussion – they publicly stick up for their users. It was Google who refused to hand over search results to the government. It is Google that is leading the fight for net neutrality.
Microsoft is their main competitor and it has a horrible public image. It’s known for questionable business practices, huge product delays, and has no style or “cutting edge” reputation at all. Whenever you hear about Microsoft in the news, it’s always bad. The popular theory is that Microsoft has nowhere to go but down, and that’s pretty much true given their huge market shares in their strong markets and their terrible business ventures in their other markets. Instead of concentrating on what they’re good at Microsoft continues to lose market share in its strong markets and make big, expensive attempts to dominate other markets. They lost a shitload of money on XBOX, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
You could list Yahoo as a big Google competitor, but honestly they’re mostly just getting left behind by Google’s innovations and they don’t have Microsoft’s money or power to fight back with.
LOL…Google has failed to beat Yahoo! in a single market outside of search (except for online mapping, and I bet both companies are raking in the billions from that (sarcasm))
Google and Apple I can understand, but Symantec?
They make the worst products, I think the only good one to come out of Symantec was Ghost, and even then wasn’t it acquired by them?
LiveState & pcAnywhere. My MIS director can’t live unless pcAnywhere is enabled on all networked machines. Heaven forbid that we already have RDC and TightVNC working just fine on them.
Personally, I thought VNC was a little faster on the local LAN, through the VPN: pcAnywhere Gateways (running under Win98!).
The only good thing I think of from them was many many moons ago, when Apple was still based on 68K. Symantec was also a nice developer company that had bought in the very elegant ThinkC product. When Apple switched to PPC, Symantec was already in deep poo for PPC tools, they had nothing, I think their devs had already left.
Metrowerks came along and took all the shine off Symmantec, saving Apple’s butt and that lasted till Moto took over that and blasted another great little SW company.
I gave Symantec one more chance with their Cafe IDE during the Java hype years, then they sold that off and left dev tools behind. Just as well.
Lesson learned is that most small nice companies don’t last long, get bought out by meanies or become meanies themselves, very very few companies keep their loyal fans for ever.
I would have though Sony or IBM would be far better than Symantec despite some issues.
I am using my 3rd thinkpad and have 2 thinkcenter computers, love them…..but, not sure I love Lenovo….IBM service was unparalleled (?), but now….. I dunno. As a home user I feel like I have been somewhat abandoned. Further, as a Linux user IBM seems to be giving Linux, on the desktop, a great deal of lipservice with little else….I have been loyal. But, maybe I won’t be much longer. Next computer…homebuilt, probably. I agree with most of the posts concerning Symantec…just another namber for an insipid virus.
manjabes, maybe. if that is the case then the Be.inc should be named too. A large portion of the customerbase havent left the be universe even though it was almost five years since the demise of Be.inc