The surprise is not that Apple regained the lead, but that it lost it in the first place.
Many still believe this was a mistake that JD Power didn't want to admit.
Let's look at last year's numbers:

As you can see, Apple won in everything but price, but still lost overall. What this means is that each category is not weighted the same.
JD Power gave the weigth of each category. Some The Verge commenter did the math considering the weights:

And guess what, it still doesn't add up.
Even when you consired that the total might have been calculated before the star ratings were rounded, it's mathematically impossible for Samsung to have a higher score with the category biases JD Power provided.
When questioned about the situation, JD Power's director Kirk Parsons answered:
Which is total bul***** considering the weights provided.The differential between the price category scores of the iPad and the score of the Samsung tablets that were included in the survey was large enough to “more than offset” the score in the other four categories.
Either JD Power should have provided the actual category biases they used to calculate the total, either they should have corrected the total using the initially provided category biases. Now they just decided to contradict maths instead without further justification.
tl;dr: Apple might never have lost it in the first place if JD Power didn't mess up their maths
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