Survey: Apple's Mac customers highly satisfied

ChangeWave reported that 81 percent of recent Mac customers are highly satisfied with their purchase, which could help Apple ride out slumping sales.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News

Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.

See full bio

Tom Krazit

Feb. 19, 2009 12:14 p.m. PT

2 min read

Mac customers report high satisfaction scores in ChangeWave's latest survey. Apple

Apple may be in for some short-term pain when it comes to the Mac, but it can take comfort in the fact that recent buyers seem very satisfied with their purchases.

ChangeWave released another one of its surveys Wednesday, which chart the likelihood of respondents to buy a personal computer over the next 90 days from one manufacturer as opposed to another. As we pointed out earlier this week, Apple appears to have finally run into the economic storm that is hurting the tech industry, although the more interesting number was the various customer satisfaction ratings assembled by ChangeWave.

Apple customers over the past 90 days reported by far the highest level of satisfaction in ChangeWave's survey, with 81 percent of Apple customers saying they were "highly satisfied." Asus customers were the second-most satisfied group, with 67 percent reporting they were highly satisfied with their purchase, while 61 percent of Acer customers fell into that category. Lenovo was last, with only 50 percent reporting such levels of satisfaction.

ChangeWave's customer satisfaction surveys are not as comprehensive as the annual one done by the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index (which Apple also leads), but they are still worth noting. ChangeWave surveys "senior technology and business executives in leading companies of select industries," who are perhaps a bit more demanding than average consumers when it comes to technology purchases.

In other tidbits from the survey, ChangeWave backed up NPD data from earlier this week that suggested Mac sales are slowing in the early part of the year. Over the past 90 days, only 20 percent of respondents said they bought a Mac notebook and just 15 percent said they bought a Mac desktop, down from 22 percent and 17 percent, respectively, recorded in ChangeWave's January survey.

Those numbers may just represent a holiday-season hangover, however. Over the next 90 days, 30 percent of respondents said they plan to buy a Mac notebook, up from 27 percent who said the same thing in January. Mac desktop suitors dipped slightly, from 27 percent to 26 percent, but that could change if new iMacs are released over the next few months.