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If you are lucky enough to be, or happen to hang around with people under the age of 29, they may well have a new favourite fashionable tech company — Mircrosoft. Yes, the same one. The Windows one. The old Bill Gates one. It’s apparently quite cool now.
According to a survey of the over-18s and the under-29s by Reuters and Ipsos, a shade under half of those asked thought Microsoft to be more fashionable now than it was last year. This hard-trending new Microsoft managed to out-grow the perception of Facebook, which only appeared to have become more liked in the minds of 42 per cent of those asked.
The Surface tablets, the continuing growth of Xbox and its edging toward the mainstream with its Kinect controller, and Windows Phone 8′s omnipresent, colourful marketing are fingered as having helped turn things around for the previously uncool tech giant.
MS is still the nerdiest kid in the playground, though, with 60 percent saying Apple’s got cooler of late and 70 per cent preferring to be seen with Google’s Android brand. [Reuters via The Register]
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Surely I can be the only one here who thinks of people of 28 as “Kids”
Hi grandpa Darrell!
Remembering how old I’m not?
Get off my lawn !!!
I have a 9 year old niece who’s Christmas wish list included Windows 8
Pah, don’t these buffoons know that being uncool is cool!
MS is cool because it’s still nerdy and uncool. WP8 is cool. There’s no getting around it.
It’s only a comparison with the same company last year, it doesn’t really show that much or even if Microsoft is cool relative to ther companies, just it’s old self.
Not cool dude, SO not cool!
Windows seems to have the better software design at the moment (but I just really bloody hate skeuomorphic eyesores), but I’d still go to Apple for product design.
I don’t actually see Apple as all that ‘cool’, it just tends to make quite good quality products which all play together fairly nicely to form a decent ecosystem.
The thing is you spend all your time with electronics looking at the OS, not the device!
The device (especially iDevices) are more of a status piece to show others that you look kewl.
yer i agree with mattoc4, ALSO.. i think the surface looks better than the ipad anyway.. tbh i think the Playbook looked better than the ipad with the exception of that giant black border.. but the macbook air looks better than most laptops i see about.. including mine….
Yeah, but if there’s some klunky device design going on, it’s hard to ever let it fully disappear and let you enjoy the OS to the full.
I’m not so sure to be honest, even after 2 years I still love the look and feel of my iPhone 4, it just feels so great in the hand – you do spend a lot of time holding the thing and pressing the odd button, so it’s not all purely digital interaction. Not to mention that everything still works and nothing’s dented or damaged; build quality and longevity are also important aspects of a product.
Bill Gates will always be cool in my eyes.
http://youtu.be/KxaCOHT0pmI
yer.. well.. Jobs could walk through it now.. .. .. .. too soon?
As soon as something becomes ‘cool’…the clock is ticking for the next counter-culture/innovation to replace it. Microsoft is on an upward trend…Apple (and to a lesser extent Google) need to watch their backs.
See AAPL for details. (also Xerox, IBM, Microsoft etc.)
So Microsoft are going to be the next, next Apple then? (After Google)
Probably.
Apple are next to lose out (something cannot be both cool and popular for too long)…Google is next. Then Microsoft again.
I don’t know how to measure “bouncebackability” though. Xerox and IBM are more niche than big player these days…
MS actually did a very good job with Windows Phones, comparing to the old Windows phones this probably is a revolution. Not entirely sure about Surface/ Surface Pro, sales figure tell a different story.
I like Microsofts products! I really want to have a WP8 phone and a Surface combo…
But I am trapped in Apple’s web and have spent so much in their damned AppStore that abandoning all that app-y goodness would feel like such a waste. *sigh* oh well, back to the gulag…
I really hate it when I see this. You are basically saying that you will never leave Apple. Assuming that pic is you, you are still so young to consign yourself to such a bleak fate.
you sir are incorrigible!
Its a combination of that and the lack of app ecosystem on Microsoft at the moment. I’m sure I’ll switch..eventually…maybe…
most them apps you paid for are probably free on Android anyway…
A cracking good point sir.
Tech companies shouldn’t be fashionable. They should be shunned from society like the rest of us
This says that more than half thought it wasn’t more fashionable than last year. So it isn’t more fashionable than last year – in fact it would be pretty much exactly the same as last year?
I guess “More people think that Microsoft is more fashionable than last year this year than they did last year.” doesn’t read as well.
“a shade under half of those asked thought Microsoft to be more fashionable now than it was last year” This doesn’t mean Microsoft is ‘trendy’ it just means Microsoft is less ‘un-trendy’ not more trendy.