Two latest Apple products are generating a lot of press and some of it is decidedly negative – iPad and iPhone 4. This writing will focus on the analysis of the iPad devices. When you try do “comparative” analysis one starts with a list of products to compare and iPad makes it very difficult as it seem to be positioned to compete with e-readers as well as tablets. The tablets category definition presents us with yet another challenge, so for the purpose of this analysis I decided to compare iPad with popular e- or digital book devices as well as some tablet devices that do not have a physical keyboards. Some popular retail website offer a very useful hint to see what percent of people who looked at a product actually purchased it, and if not what was the product they did, however in the case of iPad or Kindle such information was thoughtfully removed from every site I have checked. I also am very disappointed not to find any customer reviews on the Apple store website. It is very hard to believe that none of over 3 millions of  iPad customers did not write about their product experience on the manufacturer store site. The only possible explanation of that can be found in accusations that Apple actually censors the iPad customer discussions the same way as they accused of doing for iPhone4 here and here. It is very disturbing if it is true.

So here is the list of products I have decided to compare in terms of them meeting their customers expectations. You can make it larger if you click on the report.

Here is the scale legend for better understanding of the report.

iPad did not meet expectations of their customers, who wrote the reviews with 53% reported negative experiences (0.91) related to Reliability, and 65% of comments about Support were negative (0.94). To be fair, the customers are overwhelmingly impressed with screen readability (100% rated 1.81)  and usability of the device (96% rated 1.53).

I know the Apple just reported 78% increase in profits, but with 63% of their flagship product customers reporting that its value did not meet their expectations (0.98), I can’t help but wonder how long it would take for Apple to start loosing it’s “freshness”.

DVD and Blu-ray devices analysis by Chris Haugley

Sylvania NB530SLX Blu-ray disc player wins 2010 Piplzchoice Award

Portable USA PU-10W
2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
26.8% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category
The winners are chosen by their customers

Below is the list of the runner up products

2010 Piplzchoice Award for Digital Frames

and a sample of the Customer Satisfaction Index distribution from average for the best and the worst performers
Digital Frames Reputation – Deviation from average CSI

Piplzchoice award for Photo Printers goes to Canon IP90v

Transcend StoreJet 25 Mobile Anti-Shock 500 GB
2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
55% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category
The winners are chosen by their customers

For full list of products in this category and Customer Reviews used for this research, select “Computers & Accessories > Computer Add-Ons > Drives & Storage > Hard Drives” Category in Product Reputation Market Intelligence Report on this site.

Interesting finding of this study that we could find only three runner ups in this product category. Most external portable disk drives do not meet customer expectations for reliability and support.

2010 Piplzchoice Award for External Hard Drives goes to Transcend StoreJet 25

Logitech Z-3 Wood Grained 2.1 Speakers
2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
20.3% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category
The winners are chosen by their customers

Below is the list of the top runner up products:

Logitech Z-3 Wood Grained 2.1 Speakers wins 2010 Piplzchoice Award

For full list of products in this category and Customer Reviews used for this research, select “Computers & Accessories > Computer Speakers ” Category in Product Reputation Market Intelligence Report.

Samsung LN52A630 1080p 120 Hz LCD HDTV
2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
9% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category
The winners are chosen by their customers

For full list of products in this category and Customer Reviews used for this research, select “Televisions & Video > Televisions” Category in Product Reputation Market Intelligence Report on this site.

Here is the list of runner ups.

2010 Piplzchoice Award for 52 Inch Televisions

This is the correction

This week we analyzed Customer Reviews for Remote Controls. As of this date we monitor 90 products in this category and analyze 12,772 reviews written by their customers; however some of these products have not accumulated enough reviews to produce statistically representative and accurate metrics, so we filtered them out of the competition. The second round disqualified any product that failed to meet Customer Expectations with its Reliability or Support.

URC RFS200
2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
29% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category
The winners are chosen by their customers

For full list of products in this category and Customer Reviews used for this research, select “Accessories & Supplies > Audio & Video Accessories > Remote Controls” Category in Product Reputation Market Intelligence Report.Below is the list of contenders
URC RFS200-2010 Piplzchoice Award winner/29% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category