Here is the Q2 2012 update. These links – Q1 2012 and 2011 – will take you to the previous reports. This edition includes 353 smart phone models and the aggregation of 104,691 unsolicited customer reviews. We have used the Opinion Miner® software to extract specific attributes of customer experiences with these smart phones and to measure the customers’ sentiments for each attribute. In the interest of consistency, we again filtered for smart phones that have been reviewed during the last 3 months to focus on currently sold models.
Disclaimer – Nokia is our client, however neither Nokia, nor any other company or organization, have sponsored or influenced this study.
Customer Reviews per Model
Only the 51 models that were actually shipped to paying customers during the past quarter are included in this study, as we are interested only in actual customer experience, not in marketing accolades.
If you are a new reader, I would like to stress that no survey or focus groups methods were used to collect data for this study. Please check our methodology if you are interested.
The most customer-reviewed smart phones that made through the filters for Q2 2012 are the same models as the last quarter, but their content contributions have slowed down dramatically during the last couple of months – HTC Thunderbolt (5,892), Samsung Droid Charge (2,009), and Motorola Droid Bionic (1,633). Obviously, the time of a phone introduction impacts a total, aggregated number of customer reviews published for these devices. Click on any image below to make it larger.
Customer Reviews per Brand
The enormous number of customer reviews of the Thunderbolt, which is almost obsolete by now, keeps the HTC brand as the most reviewed one by their customers. We anticipate the next report to reflect this change.
It is worth mentioning the trends of a dramatic decline for LG in a number of customer reviews and steady rise of popularity for Nokia (see figure below). We have studied before the correlation between number of customer reviews published online and a number of units shipped, and therefore found it important to use it for comparison. These trends suggest similar dynamics in customer purchases.
Customer Reviews per Operating System
The reviews of Android phones absolutely dwarf ALL other operating systems, and the trend does not suggest any major change. One thing that is worth noting is the growth in numbers of reviews of Windows phones from 1% at the year-end to 4% at the end of Q2 2012. It would be interesting to see if this trend continues.
iPhone aficionados are a very finicky crowd, and even though the earlier models continue selling, virtually no reviews of those are still published by their purchasers. This fact explains the precipitous drop in iOS share of the reviews after the end of 2011.
Customer Satisfaction per Operating System
Customer satisfaction with Android phones continues improving from the previous reports, but Windows phones satisfaction has seen the most dramatic increase since the previous quarter – 18%, while customer satisfaction with Blackberry phones keeps sliding down. In fact, five out of ten smart phones with highest customer satisfaction scores are Windows models.
It is worth repeating that these scores are the aggregate, average satisfaction with the phones and not with their operating systems. We will look at Customer Satisfaction with an operating system later in this post.
This time, the Samsung Galaxy S Blaze smart phone came with the highest general satisfaction score of 1.81, exceeding its customers expectations by 81% (N=106). The Motorola Atrix 2 (CSAT=1.78/N=186) and Nokia Lumia 710 (CSAT=1.72, N=318) were the closest contenders while LG Cosmos (0.79/590), Samsung Intercept (0.88/1,186) and Blackberry Curve 3G 9330 (0.91/410) have disappointed their customers the most. The two out of the last three have been on the list last quarter, as LG Cosmos’ reputation has continued to sink deeper.
Attributes of Customer Experience by Importance
Our Market Intelligence Analysis of the segment indicates that the following Attributes of Customer Experience are most important to the customers:
This 2-minute video explains the methodology for this chart in greater detail –
More specific insights in customer perception required the application of additional filters to select models representing different Operating Systems in significant numbers. The following models were selected:
- Apple 4S – 1.466 customers (iOS)
- Blackberry Bold 9330 – 502 customers (Blackberry OS)
- HTC One X – 259 customers (Android)
- Nokia Lumia 900 4G – 780 customers (Windows)
- Samsung Infuse -321 customers (Android)
The customers count as of June 30, 2012
Satisfaction Scores for Reliability and Display
The graph below shows Customer Satisfaction scores for the smart phones Reliability experience. Blackberry Bold 9930 is the only model from this sample that disappointed its customers
Not surprisingly the iPhone continues to dazzle their customers with the quality of its Display. However, all models included into this analysis earned very high marks. A score 1.0 represent “Satisfied” value as defined in our methodology and interpreted by our algorithms as an equivalent of this statement, “I experienced what I have expected”.
In the interest of the space limitations, I would like to suggest that more details and customer feedback verbatim are available on request via access to the dynamic dashboard for this segment. I will be happy to provide the link free of charge.
