Customer Loyalty Strongest Among iPhone Owners

Survey after survey places Apple products far ahead of their competitors in terms of customer satisfaction. It's never even a true contest, iOS devices and Macs consistently come it on top by a wide margin. So it seems fitting that the iPhone would have the highest retention rate out of any platform. In fact, 78% of all iOS owners were iOS owners beforehand. 27% of current iOS users switched from Android. People aren't leaving Android in droves, however. 67% of
Android users were previous Android users, and only 14% of them switched from iOS. Very few people are switching to Blackberry or Windows phone, although a number of them have switched toeither Android or iOS.


The table above breaks down phone loyalty by manufacturer. The number of iPhone owners who have switched from other manufacturers is high, while the reverse cannot be said. However, it is interesting to note that Samsung, out of all Android manufacturers, has pulled more users from Apple than any other. 11% of current Samsung users came from iOS. The second closest phone manufacturer is HTC, who can claim that 4% of their users recently came from iOS. Clearly, Samsung's marketing and the success of the HTC One and Galaxy S4 have been helpful for the companies. Not that this is a huge victory for either manufacturer. 31% of current iOS users switched from a Samsung device, and 31% have also switched from HTC.

It's also interesting to take a look at the basic phone owners. These are the phones that can't be classified as smartphones, they're either feature phones or plain, old "dumb phones", capable of calling or perhaps texting. These phone owners are more likely to switch to Android right now than iOS. However, it's easy to see why. Android phones are frequently discounted, offered for free, or have a low price to begin with. This is where a budget iPhone would help Apple, but they've yet to release such a phone.

If you own either an iPhone or an Android phone, chances are, your next phone will be running the same operating system. Although, if you're using an iPhone, you're more likely to stick with your phone manufacturer than any other. Perhaps that can be blamed on customer satisfaction and quality. Blackberry, once again, has seen more bad news from this study, and Windows Phone sales have not done well either. But this is to be expected, neither have seen great success with their smartphone lines recently.

Source: Gigaom