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Office PCs

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

HP retains the crown, followed by IBM, HCL and Dell. Assembled systems, a long-time category topper, drop yet again, barely making it to the cut off of 10 percent. This is due to two factors, the first being that the survey since the past couple of years has been limited to enterprises and, second, the price differential between branded and assembled machines has been coming down.

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Unlike in the past, assembled systems have the lowest brand loyalties. This should be encouraging news for the big brands.

HP has the highest brand loyalty, followed by Dell. HP stands to gain the most from the shift from assembled machines, followed by HCL. For IBM there is more to be gained from other brands (those that did not make it to the User' Choice Club) and assemblers than from HCL, HP or Dell. While loyalty for Dell is high, shifts to it from other brands are low. This could be because of Dell's business model (direct sales) but could also convert to difficulties in getting converts. Dell got a majority of its votes from software houses. HCL got comparatively very strong support from the BFSI segment.

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Compared to last year, IBM and assembled are witnessing reduced loyalties, while Dell and HCL are seeing an improvement.

Last year's brand-switch matrix showed that HP would improve its margin over competition this year, as it was gaining the most from the others. This year's Users' Choice index has borne that out with HP increasing its lead over IBM from 38 to 54 index points. The brand-switch matrices for the two years show HP consolidating its hold on the desktop PC market. Now, if we were to index current ownership, then IBM scores 61 to HP's 100. Clearly, IBM needs to work out ways of countering HP or for gaining market share from other players.

2003

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