Samsung vs Apple – which brand of smartphone is preferred?

By Team Freeform

People feel strongly about their smartphones. This much was clear when we analysed the results of a recent research study looking at habits and activity with respect to smartphones, tablets, TV viewing and electronic gaming (discussed in a previous Inside Track article here .

Altogether 1122 respondents took part in the survey and in total, the use of 1410 smartphones was declared. Two thirds of respondents indicated the use of one device, while roughly a third confirmed the use of two.

The top 3 brands in terms of the number of smartphones used were Samsung, Apple and HTC respectively, but Blackberry and Nokia also put up a reasonable showing.

This picture is consistent with the smartphone market broadening rapidly over the past couple of years, with the days of absolute domination by Apple in the high end consumer space, and BlackBerry in the enterprise arena, now well and truly behind us. Right now, there is a lot of choice for both consumers and business people, in fact with the rapid introduction of new models by mainstream players like Apple, Samsung, Nokia, HTC and others it is hard to keep up.

It’s because of this continuous turnover that we deliberately pitched the questions in this survey at a brand level so we could capture the readers’ general sentiment towards manufacturers rather than trying to unravel the detail at a handset level. Even since this research was carried out in January, for example, we’ve seen the launch of the Blackberry Z10, the announcement of the Galaxy S4 and the Tawainese looking to make more of an impact with the HTC One.

In terms of brand satisfaction our respondents were in the overwhelming majority of cases either happy or very happy with their smartphones, with Samsung users coming out as the most satisfied overall, and Apple in second place.

We can also see from this chart, in which percentages relate to individual user bases, that Blackberry users were the least satisfied out of the top 5 brands, though the jury is generally still out as to whether the Z10 will change this. Unsurprisingly, looking behind this chart, those with high end devices were more satisfied with their smartphones than those with entry level equipment.

But at the end of the day, would respondents buy the same brand of smartphone again or would they go for a change? 86% of Samsung smartphone users think they’ll be sticking with Samsung compared to the 71% of Apple users who plan to remain faithful to Apple.

Even though iPhone users are not unhappy per se, perhaps the recent lack of developments that change everything’ means Apple is no longer satisfying the desire for new and exciting things that attracted users to the iPhone in the first place, encouraging people to look at other options. The modest advances in capability between the iPhone 4s and iPhone 5 won’t have helped here. Whether this is the beginning of a trend towards the iPhone being seen as just another smart phone remains to be seen. With the market changing so rapidly and new phones being introduced on a regular basis, only time will tell.

N.B. This survey was carried out on The Register IT information and news site, so is a self-selecting sample and may not be representative of the general population.

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