While Microsoft pushes a series of ads that prompt customers to focus on the in-store price (remember, the price is not the cost), Apple customers are expressing satisfaction with the ownership experience. Research firm Forrester conducted a survey of 4,600 people about their experiences with several brands, including Apple, HP, Dell and Gateway.

Apple received a "Good" rating, meaning 80% of respondents rated their experience with the company's products highly (the actual measurement system isn't in the article's description). Gateway was next with an "Okay" rating (66% satisfaction), followed by HP at 63% (Lauren's choice!) and Dell bringing up the caboose at 58%.

This illustrates the tough spot Microsoft is in. They don't manufacture the hardware that their product, the OS, requires. Yet, people use "PC" -- which actually stands for "Personal Computer" -- synonymously with "Windows." It's unclear the article's summary where those customers' dissatisfaction comes from, the hardware or the software. While it's easy to say that Microsoft should switch focus from price to quality, it would be very difficult for them to implement, as they only control half of the equation.

[Via Electronista]

In today's New York Times, Tim Arango tells a story of a heated conversation between Sony Music's Rolf Schmidt-Holtz and Steve Jobs on Christmas Eve -- one that "ricocheted around the music industry."

Apparently, before the announcement at Macworld, all the labels except Sony had agreed to a new pricing deal. Sony wanted the new pricing to take effect immediately after the announcement, but Jobs wanted a longer rollout. After the phone call, according to the Times, Sony agreed to the longer waiting period.

During this time, Jobs was allegedly on medical leave, recuperating at home from his much-publicized illness. Arango notes that Jobs' point-man on music industry relations, Eddie Cue, and Apple's entire staff "do their best to follow Mr. Jobs's style in their own negotiating." That is to say: Hardball.

Music executives, according to an unnamed source, are afraid of angering Apple, as Apple can single-handedly remove a label's catalog from the iTunes store, angering the label's customers. At the same time, Apple can claim that their hands were tied, the decision wasn't theirs, and that all the ire should be directed at the music industry. Such a thing hasn't happened -- yet -- but the threat is there, and real.

The labels, on the other hand, feel like they brought Apple back from the dead, blessing the company with content.

Even so, David Card of Forrester Research offered an interesting coda to the story: "if it weren't for Apple, God knows how bad the music industry would be," he said.

[Via 9-to-5 Mac.]

Ben Gray, analyst at Forrester Research, says that Mac OS X accounts for 4.5 percent of the business operating system market, 3¾ times their share in January 2007.

Computerworld notes that all this has happened with one thing notably absent: an enterprise strategy. "I haven't seen anything from Apple that seems to show it's attack[ing] the enterprise market," Gray said.

He says the gains in market share are due to two trends: client virtualization (using software like Parallels or VMWare) and the idea that corporate IT departments are more willing to support a broader range of hardware and software.

"In the end, [IT departments] want their employees to be as productive as humanly possible, so they'll approve tools that people are more comfortable with," said Gray.

In related news, Windows' overall share of the corporate market dipped slightly from 95.6 to 94.9 percent for the same time period.

[Via Macworld.]

Forrester Research has mined its vast knowledge resources, and produced a report suggesting that Apple's products in 2013 will be nothing but household clutter.

Apparently Apple is out of ideas, so Forrester decided to take on the task itself, coming up with an envelope-pushing list of electronics that includes such marvels as:

• digital picture frames
  
• clock radios
  
• universal remote controls

Wow. That's research money well spent, if you ask me. Take note Apple employees, these are the ideas you're going to have to top in your next product development meeting.

[Via AlleyInsider.]

CIO magazine recounts a Forrester Research report from last week on "The iPhone is Not Meant for Enterprises," a $280 piece of critical business intelligence that tells IT departments something they a) wanted to hear and b) already knew: the iPhone is not a Blackberry (quel suprise!). Without key features such as remote kill, data encryption, and full Exchange support, Forrester says the iPhone is DOA in BigCo environments; despite this, IT folk need a strategy for handling the iPhones that make their touchable way in the revolving doors.

Nobody expects IT to embrace the iPhone with both arms, but the tale of the numbers suggests that the warmth of the welcome may be irrelevant: the iPhone is here in a big way. With sales data suggesting that the iPhone has passed Windows Mobile in share, vendors like Visto promising full Exchange integration, and an SDK around the corner for blessed development, corporate technologists may have to settle for a policy of benign discontent as the shiny pretty things invade.

Update: Some well-phrased and funny debunking of Forrester's stance by the Macalope and John Welch.

[via Macworld]

"iTunes sales are NOT plummeting!" is the latest headline on the Forrester blog. You know Forrester, don't you? They're the ones behind the report the other day about iPods, iTunes and credit card transactions. That's the report that set everyone talking about whether iTunes was a failure and whether Apple's digital media sales were suddenly collapsing. Apple's stock dipped several percentage points on the news.

Today, Forrester's blog points out that their findings were misinterpreted. iTunes sales did drop after the holiday rush last year but Forrester did not find that iTunes sales as a whole were on a general downward trend. Instead, it looks like iTunes sales are leveling off and that Apple's overall profitability should not be affected; their profits come mostly from iPod sales and not from iTunes.

Good news for Apple lovers. Bad news for the newspapers with their overblown headlines.

The Register rang the town bell this week, pouncing on a report from Forrester Research which declared that iTunes Store sales are on the decline. Forrester analyzed 27 months of credit card transactions to conclude that revenue has fallen 65 percent since January 2006, and the size of the average transaction has dropped 17 percent. These numbers, however, don't take into account transactions like gift cards and gifted music, and I have a sneaking suspicion they might also have omitted other popular services like PayPal, which can be tied directly to a customer's banking account, bypassing credit cards altogether.

Apple is notoriously tight-lipped about the performance of their 800 lb gorilla iTS, but MacNN notes that Apple reported 'above-break-even' profits for the store during last September's earnings conference call. Considering the iTS has long been known as a paper-thin profit loss-leader to sell iPods, as well as the possibility that the neglected portions of iTS transactions could shift Forrester's findings, I'm a bit skeptical of these reports.

Of course, The Macalope asks 'who cares?' to all this worry of how the iTS is doing, but Geoff Duncan at Digital Trends reminds us of some interesting potential shifts in the digital distribution model that could depend directly on how well present offerings fair. Microsoft opened a Pandora's box by agreeing to pay the labels $1 for each Zune sold, and there are rumors that the jackass labels might be using this to pressure Apple into a similar deal. On an even broader scale though, Geoff also mentions something called 'blanket licensing' where said jackass labels could apply a tax to broadband subscriptions, allowing users to continue to freely download content over any network or service they use.

We will undoubtedly receive an updated performance report on the iTunes Store from Stevie at next month's Macworld. If anything, Forrester's report and the resulting discussion might signify a new wave of interestingness in the sea of DRM and digital distribution. Stay tuned.