electronics

Smartphone Satisfaction Hurts Older Models

smartphones

With even more smartphones on the market now than a year ago, consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable and satisfied with what they're getting, a factor that is damaging to the more traditional handsets available at much lower cost.

According to new research from J.D. Power and Associates, consumer satisfaction with smartphones has increased 14 index points (on the company's 1,000-point scale) since April 2009, while overall satisfaction among traditional mobile phone users has declined by 6 points in the same time frame.

"It's kind of buyer's envy," Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services at J.D. Power, tells Marketing Daily. "More often than not, these buyers of traditional phones are disappointed with the feature set."

Among smartphone users, Apple far outpaces the rest of the pack in terms of satisfaction, garnering a score of 811. The several factors working in Apple's favor include ease of use, design and features, which outweigh the product's notable short battery life and inconveniences with data from exclusive carrier AT&T.

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"They're kind of an outlier," Parsons says. "They live in a field all by themselves."

Still, other makers such as LG and BlackBerry had respectable scores of 776 and 759, respectively. According to the survey, the proportion of consumers purchasing smartphones has increased as prices have started to decline and carriers are discounting devices to attract new customers.

However, the discounts offered on traditional phones are having a negative effect, Parsons says. According to the study, 43% of traditional mobile phone owners received their handsets free of charge. At the same time, satisfaction with those devices among those owners is significantly lower than with owners who pay for the traditional phones (693 versus 713).

"Satisfaction is notably lower among owners who receive their handsets for free, because these phones often do not offer the full suite of features that owners desire," Parsons says. "When fewer features are available, usage rates also decline, which translates into lower brand loyalty."

Another finding from the report also shows that 40% of smartphone owners are entirely replacing landline calling with their mobile phones (compared with 27% of traditional handset owners). "It goes back to ease of use," Parsons says. "They can do all the things with their smartphones that they can do with their landlines."

2 comments about "Smartphone Satisfaction Hurts Older Models ".
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  1. Scott Posner from red rocket LA Marketing and PR, October 9, 2009 at 1:19 p.m.

    I think this falls into the "did we really need a study to know this" category.

  2. Kevin Horne from Verizon, October 9, 2009 at 2:43 p.m.

    However, the discounts offered on traditional phones are having a negative effect, Parsons says.

    But then 2 sentences later the article says:

    "Satisfaction is notably lower among owners who receive their handsets for free, because these phones often do not offer the full suite of features that owners desire," Parsons says. "

    ?

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