« October 2004 | Main | December 2004 »
November 29, 2004
Tech firms praised for online customer respect
By Linda Rosencrance, ComputerworldHigh-tech companies generally do a good job of treating customers well online, but many still fail to adequately guard personal data, according to a new customer-respect study of computer products and services companies. For its "Fourth Quarter 2004 Online Customer Respect Study," which was released Monday, The Customer Respect Group Inc. in Bellevue, Wash., reviewed the Web sites of 63 of the largest computer products and services firms in the U.S.
Overall, eBay Inc. scored highest among computer and data services companies, while Equifax Inc. scored lowest. Lexmark International Inc. topped the computer peripherals list, while Symbol Technologies Inc. fared worst.
Microsoft Corp. did best among computer software companies (and overall), while Siebel Systems Inc. scored lowest in that category. Hewlett-Packard Co. scored highest among computer and office equipment suppliers, while NCR Corp. scored lowest. And Avnet Inc. topped the electronics and office equipment wholesalers list, while Brightpoint Inc. came in last.
The study measured corporate performance from an online customer's perspective. It assigns a Customer Respect Index rating to each company on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest achievable score.
"The fact is that there is quite a good result in the area of transparency and privacy in some sectors of the market," said Terry Golesworthy, president of The Customer Respect Group.
"There is quite an interesting divide between the companies that see the Web as strong revenue or cost-reduction mechanism, such as the HPs, the Microsofts, the Symantecs, the Gateways -- the leading consumer-type brands, which have really done a good job on their transparency and on the privacy aspect.
"They have spent a lot of time thinking about the online experience of the customer and trying to drive people to the Web -- for example Dell, which had a good score," he said. "The Web is fundamental to the business, and it's something they've focused the whole business around, as has Microsoft and HP.
"At the other end of our table, (there are) companies that are not getting it," Golesworthy said.
Those companies at the lower end of the spectrum aren't doing a tremendous amount of their business on the Web. "The takeaway is the trust issue is becoming very critical," he said. "Certain companies that have taken on board the whole customer experience ... they've seen that customers buy from people they trust."
Golesworthy said there's a large gap between the top and bottom companies in the area of responsiveness. "People like Microsoft, HP, Gateway, are responding very well to their customers and to their Web businesses," he said. "But on the other end of the spectrum, I think 13 of the companies really didn't respond to anything. They didn't deal with their customers at all.
"It's unacceptable in any industry not to respond, but (even more so) in the computer industry," Golesworthy said.
However, when it comes to customers' personal data, some companies are still sharing some data, although they do so less in this industry than in others, he said.
The Customer Respect Group interviewed a representative sample of the adult Internet population and analyzed more than 1,000 Web sites across a spectrum of industries to determine the attributes that create an online customer experience.
These attributes include Web site simplicity (ease of navigation), responsiveness to inquiries, respect for customer privacy, attitude (the customer focus of a site), transparency (open and honest policies) and principles (value and respect for customer data). Combined, those issues are used to measure a company's overall Customer Respect Index rating.
Posted by Chad Dickerson at 11:15 PM
November 24, 2004
Linux server sales top $1 billion in Q3
By Robert McMillanQuarterly sales of servers running the Linux operating system topped US$1 billion [b] for the first time during the third quarter of 2004, analyst company IDC reported Wednesday. With year-over-year revenue from Linux server sales up 42.6 percent, Linux accounted for more than 9 percent of the $11.5 billion [b] in servers sold worldwide during the quarter, which ended Sept. 30, the research firm said. The server market as a whole grew by 5.5 percent from the year-earlier figures, an indication that IT spending is on the rise from the conservative levels that IDC has tracked over the last few years, said Vernon Turner, [cq] group vice president and general manager of enterprise computing with IDC. "We see server spending continuing to be very strong, but more importantly, it's stronger than the rate of inflation," he said. "CEOs are finally saying, 'Lets get beyond normal replacement cycle.'"
Strong sales of both Linux and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system fuelled an 18.2 percent growth rate for "volume systems," which tend to be powered by Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s x86 processors. Windows server revenue grew by 13.3 percent year-over-year, IDC said.
When measured by revenue, IBM remained the No. 1 server vendor with $3.66 billion [b] in revenue, or 31.7 percent of the server market. Hewlett-Packard was second with $3.09 billion [b] in revenue.
Dell Inc. was the fastest-growing server vendor, with revenue jumping 14.1 percent from its year-earlier figures. The company finished the quarter with $1.17 billion [b] in server sales, only slightly less than No. 3 server vendor, Sun Microsystems Inc., whose revenue for the quarter was $1.18 billion, [b] up 0.1 percent from year-earlier figures.
Sales of midrange servers priced between $25,000 and $500,000 -- traditionally a strong area for Sun's Unix systems -- were down 10.2 percent for the quarter, reflecting a shift toward volume systems, according to Turner. "The ongoing concern is what happens in the midrange Unix market in the long run," he said. "Are those platforms vulnerable to Linux replacements by platforms like Opteron?" he asked, referring to AMD's 64-bit server processor.
Sales of blade servers hit $287 million [m] during the quarter and now account for 2.5 percent of the market, IDC said. Shipments of blade servers were up 44 percent from last year and IBM was the top blade vendor, with 44.2 percent of the market.
When measured by number of units shipped, HP was the top vendor with 471,000 units shipped during the quarter. Dell and IBM were in second and third place with 347,000 and 259,000 units shipped, respectively. With 81,000 servers shipped, Sun actually saw the number of units it shipped decline by 0.9 percent from the year-earlier quarter.
Posted by Chad Dickerson at 01:27 PM
November 14, 2004
Gartner: Microsoft beats PalmSource in PDAs
By Robert McMillanWorldwide shipments of personal digital assistants (PDAs) using Microsoft Corp.'s Windows CE operating system have surpassed those using PalmSource Inc.'s Palm OS for the first time, following a precipitous decline in Palm OS PDA shipments in the third quarter of 2004, according to research released Friday by industry analyst company Gartner Inc. With just under 1.4 million Windows CE devices sold during the quarter, Microsoft held 48.1 percent of the market, up from 41.2 percent a year earlier. Palm OS shipments were down 28 percent, dropping from approximately 1.2 million to 850,000 when compared year over year. The market share of Palm OS dropped from 46.9 percent to 29.8 percent, Gartner said in a statement.
PalmOne Inc. continued to be the top device vendor, but its market share has dropped from 34 percent to 26 percent in the last year. The company shipped 864,000 PDAs in the third quarter of 2003 and 749,000 during the same period of 2004, according to Gartner.
The Stamford, Connecticut, research company had been expecting a decline in Palm OS shipments, but not one of this magnitude, Gartner said.
The total PDA market was up 13 percent from last year's numbers, with 2.9 million units shipped during the quarter. Gartner's PDA numbers did not include smart phones such as PalmOne Treo 600, the statement said.
Posted by Chad Dickerson at 12:05 AM
November 04, 2004
Global chip sales headed for tough times in 2005
By Sumner LemonNext year will be a tough year for semiconductor makers, as global chip sales are expected to be flat compared with 2004, according to a prominent industry group and industry analysts. Global semiconductor sales in 2005 will total US$215.3 billion, up 1.2 percent from 2004 sales of $212.8 billion, according to a forecast released this week by World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS), an industry group that tracks global chip sales. That would be a fraction of the 27.8 percent increase in chip sales WSTS predicted for this year, and sharply lower than the group's previous estimate for 2005 of 8.5 percent growth, made in May.
Looking further ahead, WSTS sees little on the horizon to signal a strong rebound in semiconductor sales, predicting an uptick of just 3 percent in 2006.
The outlook is gloomiest in the Americas, where WSTS predicted that chip sales will fall by 1.5 percent in 2005 and by a further 0.9 percent in 2006. The group did not indicate when a slide in chip sales in the region might be reversed.
Asia will continue to remain the region with the strongest sales, but growth will be much slower than the 41.1 percent sales increase expected for this year, WSTS said. Asian chip sales will grow by 2.8 percent in 2005 and by 4.9 percent in 2006, it said, noting that growth in China will outperform that of other parts of Asia.
Market analyst IDC also this week revised downwards its 2005 forecast for global chip sales, now predicting the worldwide chip market will shrink by 2 percent, compared to a previous forecast of growth of 7.6 percent. IDC said the expected slowdown in demand for chips will take place because the production plans of OEMs (original equipment makers) are outstripping end user demand.
The WSTS and IDC announcements follow closely on the heels of recent comments made by Morris Chang, the chairman and chief executive officer of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC), the world's largest contract chip maker.
At a conference in Taipei on Oct. 26, Chang warned investors that the chip industry is headed for rough times in 2005, reversing an earlier, more bullish position. TSMC had previously expected the global industry to post growth in the high single digits during 2005.
"We still expect positive growth for TSMC (in 2005) but for the semiconductor world markets we are expecting almost zero growth," Chang said last week.
Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:04 PM
November 03, 2004
Mozilla gaining on Internet Explorer
By Joris EversAlthough Microsoft Corp. still dominates the Web browser space, its Internet Explorer continues to lose market share to open-source rival Mozilla. Internet Explorer held more than 95 percent of the U.S. browser market for several years, but its share dropped to 94.7 percent in July and had declined further to 92.9 percent on Oct. 29, WebSideStory Inc., a San Diego Web metrics company, said Tuesday.
Benefiting from high-profile security vulnerabilities in the Microsoft browser and recommendations by experts to switch, the Mozilla Foundation saw its market share rise. The Mozilla Suite, Netscape and Firefox held 6 percent of the market at the end of October, up from 3.5 percent in June, according to WebSideStory.
"It is not a fast drop for Internet Explorer, but it might be considered a fast gain for Mozilla," said Geoff Johnston, an analyst with WebSideStory.
Firefox is the Mozilla Foundation's stand-alone browser. The Mozilla Suite includes a browser, e-mail client, Internet Relay Chat client and Web page editor. Netscape, distributed by America Online Inc. (AOL), is based on Mozilla technology. The Mozilla open source project was started in early 1998 by Netscape.
The rise of Firefox has been especially remarkable, Johnston said. The browser -- a 1.0 version of which is scheduled to be released Nov. 9 -- held 3 percent market share at the end of October. Firefox was introduced in February this year when Mozilla renamed its Firebird project.
"It was one thing in July to see Microsoft starting to lose market share for the first time in a trend-like fashion. But we did not know whether it would continue. It has," Johnston said.
Taking advantage of the momentum, the Mozilla Foundation is drumming up support for Firefox. The group has collected US$250,000 in donations to take out a full-page ad in The New York Times to promote the upcoming 1.0 release of Firefox. The money will also be used for other promotional activities.
Meanwhile, Microsoft delivered some updates to Internet Explorer with Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows XP and is working on a new version of the browser that will ship as part of Longhorn, the codename for the next version of Windows due in 2006, a company spokesman said. Also, the Internet Explorer development team at Microsoft has emerged from obscurity by starting a Web log.
Microsoft sees the market share fluctuation as the "natural ebb and flow of a competitive marketplace," the spokesman said.
Users who try other browsers ultimately will come back to Internet Explorer, the spokesman said. "As they check out the alternatives, we think they’ll discover that critical factors such as Web site compatibility, application compatibility and enterprise management and support are just better with Internet Explorer."
Posted by Chad Dickerson at 12:15 AM
November 01, 2004
Californians express e-voting confidence and doubts
By Robert McMillanThe majority of California voters who were polled expressed confidence in electronic-voting machines being used in Tuesday's election, while more than a third have their doubts about the machines, according to survey results released Monday by Field Research Corp., a San Francisco firm. The poll, conducted by telephone calls to a random sample of 1,216 registered voters between Oct. 21 and Oct. 27, found that 62 percent of those surveyed consider themselves either "very confident," or "somewhat confident" in the e-voting systems, but that 35 percent of respondents had doubts about the machines, which on Tuesday will be used for the first time in many parts of the state, according to Field Research.
Republicans tended to have more confidence in e-voting than Democrats, according to the survey, with 71 percent of GOP members expressing confidence in the system, as opposed to 57 percent of Democrats.
The integrity of California's e-voting machines entered the forefront of public debate in the state during the March primary elections, when voters were unable to vote because of technical problems with some of the touch-screen voting systems.
In April, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley banned the use of the AccuVote-TSX voting system in the four counties where it is installed, alleging that the system's manufacturer, Diebold Inc., rushed the systems to market without sufficient testing.
Electronic voting systems from a variety of vendors, including Diebold, will be used in a total of 10 California counties during Tuesday, according to a spokesman from Shelley's office. An 11th county, Los Angeles, has been using the systems for early voting, but will not be using them on election day, the spokesman said. He declined to comment on the Field poll.
Field Research's poll has a sampling error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points, the research firm said.
Posted by Chad Dickerson at 09:35 PM