Defying an onslaught of smartphones that have recently hit the market, Apple's iPhone 4 continues to outperform the industry in terms of customer satisfaction.
This is according to the findings of the latest ChangeWave New Smartphone Owners Survey. To find out which manufacturers are currently winning and losing this battle, ChangeWave asked 1 212 consumers who had purchased smartphones within the past six months to rate their new models.
“As we've consistently seen in our consumer smartphone demand surveys, the Apple iPhone continues to outperform the industry in terms of customer satisfaction - with better than three-in-four new iPhone owners (77%) reporting they're very satisfied with their new model,” says Paul Carton vice-president of research at ChangeWave.
According to Carton, among individual iPhone models, the iPhone 4 received an exceptionally high very satisfied rating (84% for 32GB; 78% for 16GB), confirming ChangeWave's earlier survey findings that despite the controversy surrounding its initial release, the iPhone 4 has been 'extraordinarily' well received by its owners.
“Importantly, the iPhone 4 scores are even better than the ratings for the earlier generation iPhone 3GS models (81% for 32GB; 77% for 16GB) which were recorded in the May 2010 new smartphone owners survey,” Carton says.
Motorola came in at a strong second place, with 71% of new Motorola smartphone owners saying they are very satisfied with their purchase - eight points ahead of third place HTC (63%).
According to the survey the Droid 2 - Motorola's latest release in its Android line-up of smartphones - also received an exceptionally high very satisfied rating (74%), as did the Droid X (71%), which was released one month earlier.
Carton says both models have exceeded the satisfaction rating for the original Droid (69%), recorded in the May 2010 ChangeWave survey.
Lagging behind
“Lagging behind these three smartphone leaders, we find the very satisfied ratings for Samsung (45%) and Research In Motion (44%).
“But it's important to remember that both companies just recently released their newest models; the Samsung Galaxy S line and the RIM Torch and they're only partially reflected in the overall satisfaction ratings,” Carton explains.
He adds that a huge player in the Android smartphone market, HTC released its latest models last spring but they continue to hold their own with the Evo 4G registering a 76% very satisfied rating and the Droid Incredible 70%.
“Both remain among the top-rated smartphones in the industry and well ahead of the rating for other HTC phones (45%),” Carton says.
“In an encouraging sign for RIM, their latest new model - the BlackBerry Torch - received a 64% very satisfied rating, significantly higher than the Bold (48%), Curve (40%) and other BlackBerry RIM models (37%)”.
Carton stresses that the high very satisfied rating for the Torch is a breakthrough for the Canadian smartphone manufacturer - which has lagged in customer satisfaction for the past two years of ChangeWave surveys ranking below the top-rated models of Apple, Motorola and HTC.
According to a recent research by Gartner, Apple's iPhone sales grew to propel the company to be the number four mobile phone maker on the planet during the September quarter of 2010, trailing behind Nokia, Samsung, and LG respectively. The report places RIM at fifth position.
The research firm says while Apple's market share rose from 2.3% to 3.2%, Nokia's market share fell from 36.7% of the market to just 28.2%, even though the company sold four million more devices year-over-year (113.5 million in Q3 2009, up to 117.5 million in Q2 of 2010).
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