The American Customer Satisfaction Index claims Microsoft remains the top software company

May 20, 2014 08:48 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is investing a fortune to expand in some other market sectors, including tablets and smartphones, but software remains its thing and the American Customer Satisfaction Index published by the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business this week comes to confirm this.

The report says that Microsoft has improved its consumer satisfaction rating in the software industry despite the decline of the PC industry. The huge growth of the tablet and smartphones markets have already challenged Microsoft's rating, but the report states that Microsoft remains the “computer software giant.”

“Computer software customer satisfaction is stable at an ACSI score of 76. Microsoft inches up 1% to 75, as does the aggregate of smaller software makers, but not enough to impact the industry as a whole. The rise of tablets and mobiles remains a challenge for traditional software makers looking to appeal to a new generation of consumers,” the report states.

Microsoft itself is well aware of the fact that it needs to expand its business and invest in some other products beside software, so last year the company started the so-called One Microsoft reorganization plan that's supposed to push the firm towards a devices and service approach putting the focus on hardware and cloud-based services.

At that time, CEO of the company Steve Ballmer explained that it was not enough to rebuild the company in order to bring a wider array of products to the market, but that it should also improve the way it was working with partners, consumers, and developers.

“We will reshape how we interact with our customers, developers and key innovation partners, delivering a more coherent message and family of product offerings. The evangelism and business development team will drive partners across our integrated strategy and its execution. Our marketing, advertising and all our customer interaction will be designed to reflect one company with integrated approaches to our consumer and business marketplaces,” he said in an announcement in mid-2013.

As part of the reorganization, Steve Ballmer himself left the company, with Satya Nadella, the former boss of the cloud division, now at the helm of the software giant.

Nadella has promised to continue the transition to devices and services with the help of a new administration team that includes Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates who agreed to return to the company in a more active role. Gates now holds the technical adviser position and promised to work on new products together with the new leadership team.

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