Monday, December 8, 2008

Nokia tops channel brand affinity survey

Nokia mobile communications proved the highest ranked brand across the Australian channel, according to IDG’s new Brand Affinity report.


Based on responses from more than 100 channel representatives, the survey found the brand with the highest affinity score was Nokia mobile communications, closely followed by HP’s printing division.


HP also took third position with servers, while Canon printers and VMware rounded out the top five. Infrastructure vendors also held strong positions as some of the most recognised brands, with Cisco networking and storage, Sun servers and APC’s business continuity tools all featuring in the top 10. HP’s business software came in ninth.


The IDG Brand Affinity survey listed 65 different brands across a variety of IT and telco categories including printers, notebooks, storage, servers, security, software and mobile communications. Respondents were asked to rank their perception of the vendors as positive, very positive, neutral or negative. Affinity scores were then tabulated based on the range of responses.


In the notebook space, HP and Toshiba chalked up the highest affinity scores and had positive responses of 86 per cent and 78 per cent, respectively. Cisco and Trend Micro garnered the best results for security, while Cisco took out the networking category.


In terms of the number of positive responses overall, Nokia (93 per cent), Canon printers (89 per cent) and HP’s printing unit (87 per cent) were clear winners. Server and storage categories performed well overall, with Sun, HP and IBM receiving above-average scores.


Australia’s two largest telcos had the lowest affinity scores and received the most number of negative votes. Twenty-seven per cent of respondents had a negative perception of Telstra, followed by Optus at 22 per cent. Across IT brands, Dell notebooks had the most negative responses (21 per cent).


Brands with the least penetration in the channel were Secure Computing, Serena Software and Macquarie Telecom.


The channel results are part of a broader brand survey conducted by IDG of 241 IT representatives across government and private sectors. Across all respondents, HP came out trumps with its printer and notebook brands, recording the highest affinity result.


Source : http://www.arnnet.com.au/