Where is the love? It may not be around.
Few regularly change phone brands today, right?
You get involved with one ecosystem or another and – on Android – with a specific brand within the ecosystem. So, you upgrade to the next, even bigger of those to come.
I wonder, though, if those on the Android side are getting, well, a little bored.
Please lower that thorny implement, you have committed Galaxists and Pixelites, and observe these findings in a survey of 5,000 of your fellow citizens.
Conducted by the SellCell phone market, this survey has delivered disturbing results.
Some may focus on the most obvious. The loyalty of Apple owners to the brand has increased to a record 92% – that’s 1.5 points. Meanwhile, Samsung owners’ loyalty dropped 11.7% to 74%.
If more than a quarter of your customers want to buy a phone from another brand, you may have a problem. It may just be an image problem. Somehow, Samsung has been a little out of focus in recent years.
But would it also be fair to suggest that the company’s production of phones – the fascinating Fold aside – has failed considerably?
The phones arrive, they get some publicity and seem to leave without capturing much imagination. Meanwhile, Apple’s aggressive product strategy with its iPhones has brought tangible design changes and a somewhat irrational level of loyalty.
I am not the type to stick the daggers deeper when they are already embedded in the throats, but 53% of these Samsung defectors have admitted that, in the next update of their phones, they will switch to an iPhone.
This suggests that it is much easier to switch from a Samsung phone to an iPhone than vice versa, or that Apple has done some things well, while Samsung has not. Or both. It certainly suggests that the Galaxy line is not making everyone happy.
Let’s focus on one of those things that Apple may have done well. See, the biggest reason that Samsung users gave the defects to switch to another brand was not the fact that their phones are defective or even bored. Instead, they pointed to the other brand that offers “better privacy protection”.
And which company has been clinging more to privacy, if not Apple?
If Samsung should care about its phones, think of Google and its pixels. Samsung may have lost 11.7 loyalty points, but the Pixel lost 18.8. Now, 35% of Pixel owners say they are going elsewhere.
If you told any CMO, in almost any category, that 35% of your customers intended to get rid of your brand, the scams would give rise to palpitations, which would lead to layoffs.
I confess that I was not surprised. Somehow, Google’s understanding of telephone marketing – and all its associated nuances – has always been lacking.
Even when the company makes excellent Pixels – and has done so – it still launches them indifferently, as if it has better things to think about. (And some may argue that Google has a wide range of things to think about.)
Still, one should always be at least a little skeptical about research and, especially, what people say in it. People are often not to be trusted.
If you’re in the mood to give Google Pixel marketers some hope, tell them that 24% of Samsung defectors said they would buy a Pixel.
If, on the other hand, you were in the mood to make the marketers at Samsung and Google even darker, remind them that 89% of teenagers say their next phone will be an iPhone.
Ah, if only Samsung could create a nice cheap foldable phone. This can help.