iPhone 4 trumps Android rivals in customer satisfaction

Computerworld - Apple's iPhone continues to dominate rival smartphones in customer satisfaction, a research firm said today.

A survey completed in early November of more than 1,200 U.S. consumers who had purchased a smartphone in the past six months found that Apple led all competitors in customer satisfaction, with 77% of iPhone owners saying they were "very satisfied" with their decision and device.

But the surprise finding, said Paul Carton, vice president of research at ChangeWave Research, was the "exceptionally strong" showing of Motorola, which placed second, with 74% of owners giving their Android-powered devices high marks. Motorola sells the Droid 2 and Droid X.

In third place was HTC, which garnered a 63% vote for "very satisfied" on the back of its Android-based Evo 4G and Droid Incredible.

Other manufacturers lagged significantly behind Apple, Motorola and HTC, said Carton, including Samsung, with 45% of its smartphone owners very satisfied, and Research in Motion (RIM) at 44%.

Apple has consistently placed atop ChangeWave's customer satisfaction rankings since the iPhone debuted more than three years ago. A similar survey the firm did a year ago pegged the iPhone's very satisfied fraction at 74%, a number Carton called "on a different planet" compared to those of rivals such as RIM.

Since that 2009 survey, however, sales of Android smartphones, particularly those sold by Motorola and HTC, have exploded. According to IDC, 20 million Android smartphones were sold in the quarter ending Sept. 30, compared to the iPhone's 13.5 million.

Of the individual Android models, the most loved was HTC's Evo 4G, with a 76% very satisfied result, followed by Motorola's Droid 2 at 74%.

Neither could match the 32GB iPhone 4, which received an 84% very satisfied ranking, a record for Apple. Meanwhile, the lower-priced 16GB iPhone 4 polled 78%.

Both numbers for the iPhone 4 were slightly higher than those for the iPhone 3GS when ChangeWave surveyed owners in May 2010.

Carton pointed out that the results for the iPhone 4 put to rest the trouble Apple encountered last summer over the new phone's antenna, which customers said caused dropped calls and poor signal strength when they held the device in certain ways.

"[The numbers] confirm our earlier survey findings that despite the controversy surrounding its initial launch, the iPhone 4 has been extraordinarily well received by its owners," Carton wrote in a research note posted on the ChangeWave site.

Initially, that wasn't the case. When ChangeWave polled early buyers of the iPhone 4 in late July, just weeks after the phone's introduction, only 72% said they were very satisfied, a 10-point drop from the number received by the iPhone 3GS at the same interval after its 2009 debut.