Hamburg, 30.04.2019 - A Statista survey among 1,953 U.S. consumers shows that among the big five tech giants (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft) consumers view Amazon the most positively. Consumers also regard Amazon as the industry leader in most fields, most notably in “customer service”. However, Facebook sits at the other end of the scale, with nearly a quarter of consumers viewing it negatively. The big five tech giants continue to hold a monopoly on digital services, except for the digital finance and payments sector, where PayPal dominates.

According to the exclusive Statista survey, the big five tech giants (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft) have firmly established themselves in the minds of U.S. consumers, with 85% stating that they have heard of each of them.

With the tech giants being almost universally recognized, U.S. consumers can provide us with invaluable insights on the big five. When asked for their empathy with each of the brands, consumers voted for Amazon as the most favorable brand, with 4 out of 5 U.S. internet users feeling either rather positive or very positive towards Amazon and just 4% asserting a negative feeling. Google ranks second in this category, Microsoft third, and Apple fourth. Facebook comes in last: While more than half of U.S. consumers (55%) still view the company positively, 22% state a negative feeling towards Facebook.

Industry leadership

When asked to assess industry leadership, consumers again saw Amazon as ahead of the pack. Amazon was named as industry leader in four out of eight categories: “likability”, “usability”, “transparency”, and, most notably, “customer service”, where Amazon (57%) comprehensively beat its closest rival, Apple (26%). Apple is seen as an industry leader in three out of eight categories: “innovation” (36%), “protecting personal data” (26%), and “environmental friendliness” (23%).

The outlook for Facebook, however, is not as positive. As well as nearly a quarter of consumers (22%) feeling negatively towards the brand, this pattern repeated throughout the industry leadership fields, with Facebook almost always appearing at the bottom of the list, with only one exception: Facebook is seen as the industry leader in the category of “social responsibility”.

Digital Services

The high visibility of the big five tech giants is also reflected by their usership. Consumers do not only overwhelmingly know the big five, they also use their products and services on a regular basis. Over three quarters of respondents state they regularly engage with Google (80%) or Amazon (76%), closely followed by Facebook (72%) and Microsoft (69%). Apple had the lowest share of users at 48%.

With this enormous visibility and user share, the big five should have a monopoly over digital services. As expected, Facebook leads with the largest user base of a social media platform – 68% of U.S. internet users use Facebook. Microsoft leads in office suites (50%) and Google in cloud storage (30%) and virtual assistants (36%). However, nothing comes close to PayPal’s domination of the digital finance and payments sector, with 57% of U.S. internet users using PayPal, followed by Amazon Payments and Apple Pay with 14% each.

About the “Tech Giants and Digital Services” content special

The Statista survey “Tech Giants and Digital Services” is a content special within the Statista Global Consumer Survey. This special offers the results from an online study of 1,953 U.S. consumers between the ages of 18 and 64. It examines consumer attitudes towards the largest tech companies and their impact on society and delves into the usage of brands, digital services and devices.

Download the free white paper here.

About Statista
Statista is one of the biggest statistics portals in the world, integrating onto a single platform more than 1,000,000 statistics on 80,000 topics from 22,500 sources. Over 1,500,000 registered users interact with Statista on a regular basis. With offices in Hamburg, New York, Paris, and London, Statista currently employs more than 600 team members.