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Follow UsThe most coveted and the longest running IT product awards in the country are
back this year for the 14th year running, with 39 categories of IT
products. The Users' Choice 2002 is based on an all-India survey conducted by
IMRB across all sections ranging from large business, small businesses,
home-office businesses to households.
The past year has been quite tough for the Indian IT industry, with vendors trying very hard to keep their heads above water. In such trying times, the prime concern for most companies has been to concentrate on their sales and remain profitable.
Under such circumstances, it becomes very interesting to see which brands consumers prefer to choose and why. This year’s Users’ Choice
survey has thrown up some really interesting results.
For one, despite the slowdown there was one segment–multimedia–that saw a lot of action. That’s why we’ve included four categories from this segment in our survey, namely digital cameras, web cameras, DVD drives and PC speakers. The prime target for all these products are households, and therefore our questionnaire also aimed at capturing user preferences
there. The results are given in the pages to follow. Besides these, we also introduced two other new categories, namely corporate messaging servers and case tools.
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| Category | Brand | ||||
Hardware | |||||
| Home PCs | Compaq | ||||
| Office PCs | Compaq | ||||
| Notebooks | IBM | ||||
| Tape Backup Devices | HP | ||||
| CD-Rewriters | Samsung | ||||
| Hard Disks | Seagate | ||||
| DVD Drives | Sony | ||||
| General-purpose Servers | Compaq | ||||
| High-end Servers | IBM | ||||
| Network Switches | Cisco | ||||
| Cellphones | Nokia | ||||
| Monitors | Samsung | ||||
| Dot-matrix Printers | Epson | ||||
| Inkjet Printers | HP | ||||
| Laser Printers | HP | ||||
| Large-format Printers | HP | ||||
| Desktop Scanners | HP | ||||
| UPSs | APC | ||||
| Modems | D-Link | ||||
| ISDN Devices | D-Link | ||||
| PC Speakers | Mercury | ||||
| Web Cameras | Logitech | ||||
| Digital Cameras | Sony | ||||
Software | |||||
| Category | Brand | ||||
| ERP s/w | SAP | ||||
| Server Operating Systems | Win 2000 | ||||
| Corporate Messaging Servers | MS Exchange | ||||
| Professional Graphics s/w | Adobe Photoshop | ||||
| Web Graphics s/w | Adobe Photoshop | ||||
| Software-development Tools | Visual Basic | ||||
| Web-development s/w | Java | ||||
| Case Tools | Rational Rose | ||||
| Indian-language s/w | I-Leap | ||||
| Anti-virus s/w | Norton | ||||
| Accounting s/w | Tally | ||||
| ISPs | VSNL | ||||
| Free E-mail Services | Yahoo | ||||
| Chat Clients | Yahoo | ||||
| Indian Portal Sites | Rediff.com | ||||
| Indian News Sites | Indiatimes.com | ||||
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Besides determining which brand users preferred to buy in different categories, we also asked them to give the key reason for choosing it. We gave four reasons to the user to choose from: well-known brand, low price, good quality and better service.
Of these, good quality emerged as the overwhelming reason for corporates to shift to another brand in all categories. Among the households, good quality was the main reason for choosing a brand in 60% of the categories, while brand popularity was the main reason for the remaining 40%. Perhaps this is because homes are still not very IT savvy, and rely on ads and word of mouth to aid their decision-making process.
Anil Chopra