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iPhone Users Demonstrate Strong Loyalty with Planned Retention Rate of 89%
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Do you really want to go there?
Any site with Flash content.
My wife hits a lot of photography sites and a majority are flash based.
Unusable on her iPhone.
Or be blindly lead into Android's eco system. What's your point?
Anyway... the thing that is most interesting is that when you weigh in losses to gains, Apple is the only one who stands to net significant gains and every Droid maker seems to only be able to capture a small piece of the pie.
Please write a M.S. Thesis in Pure and Applied Mathematics. It's as sound as Austerity and giving Tax relief to the Rich.
Meanwhile, those Android agreements start ending due to no pool brand loyalty to the hardware manufacturer.
I disagree. If someone were to offer me an equivalent or near equivalent Android phone in exchange for my iPhone 4, AND replace my apps with near equivalent apps, I would not switch. The reason is because I'm happy with my iPhone 4 and Apple services.
I believe that if others are happy with their product they wouldn't switch either. And all polls and surveys indicate that most people are generally happy or very happy with their iPhones and Apple services.
In otherwords, I believe that earned loyalty has alot to do with it.
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For every small sample size group that buys less iPhones than average, there is probably another offsetting group that buys more iPhones than average.
Exactly. You aren't locked into specific Android hardware so users could just be switching amongst various Android phones. We need to see how many Android users are switching to the iPhone.
The so-called ecosystem isn't just about any vendor's features and offerings. It's also about developers.
Phone users, if they find an app that is really valuable for them, would have to re-buy those apps if they moved to another platform, and that's assuming they can find an equivalent app at all or of equal quality and with equal developer support. Lots of people have their own niche professions, hobbys and desires, and the iOS app store has deep list with a huge number of quirky apps for very focused specialty niches. These apps are not all fart-flashlight-games.
All the developers I've talked with recently with apps on multiple platforms are reporting only a fraction of sales revenue from any store other than iTunes.
As late as last year, I was still getting email from PalmOS app users who were keeping an old PalmPilot or Treo around because they used some app for which they still hadn't found as good a replacement on iPhone or Android. Ecosystems are stickier than you think.
as noted in the article:
(edit: so, 45% of Android users are switching, 31% are planning moving to iOS)
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Apps (Android Market takes care of that part), music, wallpapers, contacts, email messages and settings and yes even game progress can be saved and easily transferred. Remember... we have MicroSD cards. Drag and drop baby.
Obviously there’s some way to get (almost) everything from your old Android phone onto your fresh start. But is 100% of everything transferred automatically, with no thought or action required, as with the iPhone? No—and that’s why even a warranty swap is a pain with Android. Manual “drag and drop” using a card is hardly the same thing. I have Android friends who started fresh with new phones, and they didn’t get everything transferred. Their own ignorance? They failed to research properly? They shouldn’t have to. Fiddling around and doing extra steps is great for tech aficionados who like to tinker—even problems can be fun! But for the other 98% of phone users, you can’t beat the automatic iOS method of switching to new hardware.
Not entirely true... going from one iOS version to another has broken many an app.
iPhone backups fail, upgrades fail. Half the time you end up doing a clean install after a new release because of version conflicts and viola, all your crap is gone and is some cases no longer compatible.
I can tell you for a fact that right now iOS 4 backups are not 100% compatible with iOS 5.
If your upgrade to iOS 5 gets hosed and you have to do a fresh install, your iOS 4 based backup will have issues.
I'd love to give Windows Phone 7 a whirl, but I'm so deeply entrenched in iOS. I've spent a fortune on apps. Don't get me wrong I love my iPhone, I just feel drawn to WP7, especially with Mango.
Well, you can bet that loyalty rate will go down if Apple only releases an iPhone 4S.
Does it really matter what they call the new phone?
It's still new and still a upgrade to the iPhone 4.
Well, you can bet that loyalty rate will go down if Apple only releases an iPhone 4S.
I'd hate to be Tim Cook... after a decade of "worlds greatests", all eyes on you, your first big public appearance is to unveil the long-awaited successor to the iPhone 4, and...
it's...
a speed bump to the same device they made last year.
..crickets...
ha. ...jk, I'd still love to be Tim Cook.
Actually, the stats for android retention was also in this article. 55%. Better than the manufacturers, but still dismal. Almost 1 in every 2 customers wants to switch? Thats not a good sign for the platform. They can prop up the numbers and the adoption rates with cheap phones and BOGO offers (or in some cases buy one get 2, 3, or more...) while the market is taking off, but when the smartphone market is fully or mostly saturated, then what? A 45% attrition rate is unsustainable.
Something does not seem right about that 55% number. It is way to low when you compare it to the manufacture numbers.
As for Apple number I kind of want to know what it would be at after you remove the fanboy/girl factor from it. While I expect it to still be on top it it would be a fair bit lower.
First, 55% saying they will stay != 45% saying they will leave. Undecided are rarely 0% :- ) Second, people quite often say A and in the end do B anyway. Consumer electronic purchases is no exception to that rule.
What we can take away from this, if anything, is that Android users - for one reason or the other - are more agnostic in their choice of future products. Why this is so, the survey cannot say. For example, people wanting to leave now may very well just want change, check other options out. Next time around, they might switch again, and once more end up using Android. God only knows.
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Remember that survey about people thinking they had 4G? And the discrepancy between that and number of people who had an iphone? Face it, people are stupid, and as result surveys oft-times are too.
And yes, Apple losing its cool would see a drastic change in these figures. When that happens is hard to say, but that it will happen is surely more likely than not (after all, it has happened to every one in pretty much every single industry out there).
Within my small group of friends using Android, we've switched phones within the Android space a few times. That's where single manufacturers are showing low[er] numbers, but the aggregate retention is 55%.
That being said, all my switches have been to find a phone that's a solid smart phone product: battery life, stability, consistently functional GPS/BT/WiFi, good camera optics, high quality display (no pentile, no washed out colors). At some point, you lose interest in the time/effort/money, backing up, flashing new ROMs ... and choose to change platforms.
That being said, all my switches have been to find a phone that's a solid smart phone product: battery life, stability, consistently functional GPS/BT/WiFi, good camera optics, high quality display (no pentile, no washed out colors). At some point, you lose interest in the time/effort/money, backing up, flashing new ROMs ... and choose to change platforms.
I agree.
I would rate both my current phones relatively close in performance. The only exception is the iPhone 4, which doesn't hold a signal or make calls in places that my iPhone 3GS used to, without a problem.
My Galaxy S II is a personal preference currently, but I wish I could say that about the iPhone.
What I _really_ want is an iPhone that will offer both good phone performance as well as the other functionality that iPhones are known for. Perhaps by iPhone 6, Apple will have achieved that milestone. I'm not taking any further chances with iPhones till then. The iP4 is sufficient as a secondary phone for my Apple ecosystem.
Finally I must admit I'm really spoiled by the gorgeous, clear, and very spacious display on my SGS II. It's the ideal primary use smartphone. There's nothing like it for someone like me that uses a smartphone for what it was designed to do.