Horror of horrors-- Apple's brand loyalty fell from an 82% repurchase rate to a measly 71% last year, according to a ZD Market Intelligence study. This marks the first time in recent memory that Apple falls from the top of the heap; Gateway and Hewlett-Packard both scored higher than Apple, based on the percentage of computer buyers who repurchased new machines from the same manufacturer. But while that may sound ominous at first, make sure you consider the presence of Mac clones when you look at the numbers.

After all, your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff are among those Mac mavens who contributed to Apple's drooping brand loyalty numbers; we bought an LC 575 back in 1994, and added a PowerBook to the stable in 1996. But in 1997, we needed a high-end graphics machine on a limited budget; after being unable to find any 7300/200's in early January, we opted for a Power Computing clone instead. So we were one household who switched to a non-Apple computer last year, despite the fact that we stuck with the Mac OS. On the other hand, if a comparable Apple machine had been available, we would've bought it, and we fully plan to buy Apple systems in the future. (We wish we could see brand loyalty numbers for all Mac OS systems, not just Apple-branded ones.) So we're not terribly concerned about Apple falling behind.

In fact, Dave Tremblay (Senior Industry Analyst at ZD Market Intelligence) pretty much nails the situation on the head when he states that "Apple's repurchase loyalty in 1997 was a surprise, not because it went down but because it didn't go down as much as we thought it might." Now that the cloners aren't cannibalizing Mac OS system sales, the G3 Power Macs and PowerBooks are selling well, and the iMac is poised to take the consumer world by storm this fall, we're fully confident that Apple's customer loyalty will return to its customary position over the course of the next couple of years.