The Enterprise PC Trust Index, International Data Corporation’s (IDC) first independent study of PC vendors in the trust space, was issued today. Surprisingly, Apple came in fifth place, which I find a little dubious.
The research comprised 1,029 enterprise PC decision makers and buyers across 15 industries, who were surveyed on their perception of the trustworthiness, strengths, and weaknesses of their selected enterprise PC vendors. This study was independently conducted and published by IDC as part of its ongoing Trust Perception Index research series. The research group says that no external sponsorship or vendor funding was involved.
In the IDC Trust Perception Index report, Dell commanded the highest trust score (10 out of 10) among their customers which indicates that Dell evidenced strong performance across each of the four pillars of trust: Security, Privacy, Compliance, and ESG.
HP was in second place with a score of 8.45, Microsoft was in third with a score of 8.17, and Lenovo was in fourth place with a score of 7.93. Apple had an overall score of 6.85.
I’m a bit surprised at Apple’s relatively low ranking. The tech giant is usually at the top, or close to the top, of studies of customer satisfaction and trust. For example. according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Household Appliance and Electronics Study 2024, satisfaction with personal computers (PCs), Apple placed first.
Below is a response from Grace Trinidad, PhD, MPH, MS, Research Director, AI Security and Trust at IDC had this to say about the apparent discrepancies in different reports:
It’s important to note this study represents the buying opinions of Enterprise (business) decision makers. The requirements for satisfaction in a business context are different.
In truth, we were surprised too, given how highly rated Apple products actually are. This deviation from expected results – having done the analysis – is because customers were asked to rate capabilities in Security, Privacy, Compliance, and ESG separately, rather than just evaluating “how much do you trust this brand/how willing are you to use this brand/how likely are you to recommend this brand.” Your question, Dennis, is the core of how the IDC Trust Perception Index differentiates from other trust surveys or evaluations on the market – it’s a nearly item by item comparison of customer evaluated strengths and weaknesses on core capabilities or critical capabilities in each of the 4 pillars.
The study was conducted in 10 languages worldwide via web survey, resulting in a total of 1,029 responses from Enterprise PC customers. Survey respondents are asked to identify their selected enterprise PC vendors as well as those vendors that were considered but not selected. IDC says the vendor results presented in this report are derived from the responses provided by their own customers.
The research group also offers this disclaimer: The IDC Trust Perceptions Index score is based on normalized survey data of customer perceptions. While the scores offer directional insight into relative trust across vendors, differences in scores may not reflect statistically significant gaps due to variations in sample size and score distribution. These results should be interpreted as indicative rather than an absolute measure of trust.
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