Why Are iPhone Owners So Satisified and Sony Ericsson Owners Grumpy?

InvestorPlace’s article…

Apple Soars Behind iPhone 3GS Momentum

…contains a lot of interesting information and charts beyond its title’s focus (the iPhone). I found the ChangeWave Research chart titled Cell Phone Satisfaction Rating – By Manufacturer particularly interesting. I’ve never heard of ChangeWave. So, I don’t know the quality of their survey work and analytic abilities. However, it looks like they had a pretty good sample size for their survey (4,255 consumers). There is the question of how this sample was stratified and the other usual information never reported by the press. But, lacking other information, I’ll take the survey results at face value. The manufacturers listed in their survey study includes Apple, RIM (BlackBerry), LG, Sanyo, HTC, Palm, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. And, customer satisfaction was listed in that order I just listed with Apple in an unassailable first place position with 74% of iPhone users reporting they were very satisfied. RIM was a distance second with 43% of users reporting they were very satisfied. HTC stood in the middle of the pack with 35% happy campers. Sony Ericsson was at the very bottom of the list with a mere 17% of customers reporting they were very satisfied. I was quite surprised to see Nokia and Samsung tied for second-to-the-last in the list with only 29% of their customers being very satisfied.

What I didn’t see reported about this study are the responses to questions like “Why are you very satisfied?” or “What is the problem with your phone that makes you unsatisfied?” Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and Nokia might want to start contacting their customers now and asking those questions for themselves.

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