Four ways Microsoft will make it increasingly difficult to stick with Windows XP

Enterprise installed base. Source: Forrester

When Microsoft (MSFT) launches Windows 7 next week, its biggest competitor — especially in the multi-user enterprises that are its target market — will not be Linux or Apple's (AAPL) Mac OS X, but Windows XP.

Eight years after its launch, and nearly three years after Microsoft began shipping Windows Vista (its putative successor), XP is still the operating system most likely to be installed on a new PC in 81% of IT departments, according to a new Forrester Research poll.

Microsoft made it easy for IT decision makers to do what they are naturally predisposed to do — stick with what they know. Steve Balmer is not going make that mistake again, judging from a report published Thursday by Forrester analyst Benjamin Gray.

"Factors are converging," he writes, "that will provide IT managers with a compelling reason to shake the status quo, finally ending Windows XP’s corporate reign."

Gray, who last year give his clients five reasons to switch to Vista, now offers the timetable by which Microsoft will make life increasingly difficult for anyone who wants to keep supporting Windows XP.

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Why the Kids of NYC Prep brandish BlackBlackberrys

“We all have BlackBerrys, that’s so New York,” says high-school student Camille, in an episode of Bravo latest reality hit, NYC Prep. The show, a summer series that follows six teens at ritzy New York schools, has sparked a firestorm of online gossip. One recurring question: what are teens today doing with Research in Motion's (RIMM) gadget that is designed for corporate professionals three times their age?

The teens of NYC Prep

Mobile web perks like 24/7 email or virtual calendars are hardly relevant to high schoolers: Instead, these teens say they use the phone most frequently for text messaging, which has largely overtaken phone calls among the younger set. More

Owners of Apple (AAPL) iPhones who hold down jobs — as opposed, presumably, to those who go to school, are between jobs or live off the proceeds of their trust funds — are more than twice as likely to access the Internet from their phone as working Americans who own Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerries, Palm (PALM), or Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Mobile devices, according to a report issued Friday by Forrester Research.

Based on a mail survey of 61,033 Americans fielded in February and March 2008 — back when iPhones started at $499 (not $99) and had only been available for six months — the study found "a quantitative difference in what working iPhone owners do."

In particular, the authors found that:

• Working iPhone owners are more than twice as likely to use the mobile Internet. While only 9% of mobile phone owners and 38% of all working smartphone owners access the Internet from their phone at least weekly, a massive 78% of working iPhone owners do so.
• Mobile email and texting are much more common among working iPhone owners. Whereas one in two working smartphone owners sends mobile email at least weekly, more than three in four working iPhone owners do so. And 80% of working iPhone owners text weekly in contrast with 60% of working smartphone owners and 36% of  working mobile phone owners.
• Households that own iPhones spend more on mobile bills than the average mobile household. Working iPhone owners as a group spend $87 on their household mobile phone bills monthly, while all working smartphone households spend $76 and working mobile phone households spend $66 per month.
• Working iPhone owners are twice as likely as all mobile users to go online in public. In addition to home and work, the two most common places to go online, more than a third of working iPhone owners go online outside or in another public place. This is twice as many as all working mobile phone owners (17%) and nine percentage points higher than all working smartphone owners (26%).
• Fifty percent are more likely to read a blog weekly. Twenty-three percent of working iPhone owners read a blog at least weekly, whereas only 16% of working smartphone owners and 11% of working mobile owner owners do so. This blogging difference extends to maintaining a blog as well, where working iPhone owners are almost twice as likely to do so.
• A third are more likely to maintain a social networking profile weekly. Twenty-six percent of working iPhone owners maintain profiles on social networks, while only 19% of working smartphone owners and 14% of working mobile phone owners do.
• Twenty percent are more likely to use instant messaging weekly. Forty-four percent of working iPhone owners uses instant messaging at least weekly versus 37% of working smartphone owners and 24% of all working mobile phone owners.
• More working iPhone owners telecommute and access the network from home. Twenty-eight percent of working iPhone owners telecommute regularly, and 42% regularly access an employer’s network from a computer while at home. This is a greater percentage than is found among working smartphone owners, where only 20% telecommute regularly and 34% access an employer’s network regularly from home.
• Although more connected to work, fewer iPhone owners bring laptops home. Despite this greater tendency to telecommute and access an employer’s network from home, working iPhone owners are less likely to bring a work laptop home (36%) compared with all working smartphone owners (42%).

The full report is available here as a downloadable PDF for $749 — with a three-week money-back guarantee.

Below the fold: A sample graphic showing that iPhone owners are younger and richer than the general smartphone population.

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Apple (AAPL) can take some satisfaction in the fact that it clobbered the Windows PC manufacturers in the customer experience survey released last week by Forrester Research (FORR) — but not too much satisfaction.

The fact is, the computer industry as a whole fared pretty badly compared with, say, retailers and hotel chains. And even high-scoring Apple was ranked 23 out of 113, trailing the likes of eBay, Costco and BJ's Wholesale Club.

The full report, available here (free registration required), is revealing. Some 4,500 U.S. consumers were asked about their interactions with a wide range of companies — from airlines to banks to insurance providers — and rate them according to their usefulness, ease of use and enjoyability.

Barnes & Noble, which scored the highest overall, was consistently rated "excellent," as were Amazon, Target and USAA, which provides financial services for the armed forces and their families.

Apple, in the final tally, was merely "good."

Drilling into the full report, we see that Apple did manage to score an "excellent" in ease of use — although just barely. It scored a solid "good" in usefulness. But in enjoyability, it was only "okay."

Not that any of the other PC manufacturers came close. Where Apple's overall score was 80% — some might call that a B minus  — Compaq, HP (HPQ), and Gateway ended up in D territory with between 63% and 66%. Dell (DELL) basically flunked with a “poor” 58% rating overall and a "very poor" 47% in enjoyability.

"I do think Microsoft’s software has a bit to do with it," wrote the study's author, Bruce D. Temkin. As a rule, he says, "consumers don’t distinguish problems with the operating system from problems with the PC manufacturer."

"Bottom line," writes Temkin, "the Windows ecosystem needs an extreme customer experience makeover."

In the case of Dell, however, there was more going wrong than Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows. Temkin's take: "Dell got so focused on operational efficiency that it lost sight of customer experience."

But even Dell, at No. 93 on the list, looks pretty good compared with some of the Cable TV and Internet service providers. The ISPs are particularly well represented at the bottom of the list, with Time Warner Cable's (TWC) Road Runner at No. 99, Comcast (CCS) at No. 105 and Charter Communications at No. 113.

Below the fold: the full list.

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In the early days of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, when corporate IT managers were taking their first close look at the device (and wondering whether it would find a place in their organizations alongside Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry), few documents were more influential than the Forrester Research report entitled "The iPhone Is Not Meant For Enterprises."

Released on Dec. 12, 2007, the six-page, $749 report was better known by its subtitle: "The Top 10 Reasons Why We Recommend That IT Not Support It."

It was a devastating critique that savaged the iPhone from its virtual keyboard to its non-removable battery, and it triggered flame wars all across the Internet. (The comment stream on Apple 2.0's summary, available here, is 138 messages long.)

Which makes it all the more notable that Forrester's second look at the device,  published last week, is so laudatory.

This one is called "Making iPhone Work In The Enterprise: Early Lessons Learned," and it reports on the experience of IT managers at three firms that managed to fit the iPhone into their operations: Kraft Foods (KFT), Oracle (ORCL) and Amylin Pharmaceuticals (AMLN).

This report, too, is dominated by lists, starting with the top four reasons iPhones are good for business:

1. Employees like them. "In this era of Technology Populism, where consumer IT is often better than enterprise IT, it sometimes just makes sense to give employees the freedom to choose the tools they want."
2. They make mobile collaboration easier. "As anybody with experience on both iPhones and BlackBerry will tell you, the Internet feels natural on an iPhone and a like a chore on a BlackBerry."
3. iPhone users need less hand-holding. "All three firms have set up wikis so that employees can support each other. 'Our early adopters sometimes teach things we'd rather our iPhone users not know, but overall they provide better support than we can,' said one person we interviewed."
4. They can be cheaper in the long run. "In at least one case, an iPhone adopter found that the data plans for previous mobile devices were more expensive than the consumer plans AT&T is offering for iPhones. This company was able to reset its baseline plan pricing 30% lower for all phones because it supported iPhone."

This document represents a remarkable turnaround for Forrester (FORR), an organization that carries a lot of sway with IT managers and has often been hostile to Apple products.

Not this time. The introduction to the report starts like this:

"Apple is redefining its third industry: first the computer industry, next the music industry, and now the mobile industry. … The iPhone’s intuitive interface, superior browsing experience, and rapidly evolving developer tool kit make content-centric applications far more appealing on an iPhone than on a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile device. While BlackBerry is still the email and calendaring winner, iPhone devotees do make the shift to typing on glass."

Of course there are caveats, and these too come in lists.

There are the top four iPhone "challenges," including the dearth of management tools, the lack of full support for VPN and the "usual litany" of "annoying" early-generation glitches (e.g., lack of cut-and-paste and click-to-call).

And there are seven "recommendations" (launch in stages, negotiate with AT&T (T), let employees buy their iPhones at the Apple Store, etc.).

And finally, there are seven things that should be better when iPhone OS 3.o arrives, including (finally) cut-and-paste, encrypted back-up and "new policy capabilities," such as the ability to disable the iPhone's camera to discourage corporate espionage.

The full report is 13 pages long and can be downloaded here for $749.

See also:

• Top 10 reasons IT won't support the iPhone
• Gartner flips its iPhone bozo bit, gives IT the green light