June Survey: Apple and HTC are winners, Motorola and RIM not so much

[wuyanks]

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A recent survey, completed on June 24th, 2010, sheds light on the latest trends in the smartphone world, some of which are downright shocking. Conducted by ChangeWave Research, an "independent research boutique," over 4,000 consumers were surveyed throughout June, in regards to their smartphone preferences. For comparison, the results for the June survey were then compared to a March survey, asking the same questions.

A quick summary, quoted from the report itself:

• Next 90 day projections show the most extensive growth in consumer smart phone sales ever recorded in a ChangeWave survey
• Big leaps forward for Apple and HTC are occurring at the expense of Motorola and RIM
• The accompanying transformation in mobile OS preferences is being led by a huge increase in demand for the Apple OS and an accelerating downturn for the RIM OS

Let's go more in-depth with the findings. The first finding, which is rather innocuous and unsurprising: there is ever-increasing interest for consumers to purchase a smartphone. From January '08 to June '10, the percentage of people considering a purchase of a smartphone over the next 90 days increased from 8.4% to 16.4%, almost linearly, and from 10.8% in March 2010.

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The next finding is the change of Market Share between the top four smartphone companies, Apple, HTC, RIM, and Motorola. As you can see from the chart below, Apple's iPhone garnered the greatest jump of 21% in consumer interest from March (31%) to June (52%). The interest in HTC devices also increased in the same timeframe, from 12% to 19%. Unsurprisingly, interest in RIM fell substantially by 8%. And finally, how did Motorola fare? According to the chart, interest in Motorola smartphones plummeted from 16% to 9%. What could've caused such a drop-off?

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With Motorola having released its Droid X today, and the Droid II being slated for sometime in August, you would expect that interest in purchasing a Motorola device would've increased, rather than decreased over the past few months. Maybe we Motorola fans live sheltered lives in these here forums. Or perhaps something is not right about the sample surveyed. Either way, I would suspect these statistics to change dramatically, when the survey is conducted again in a few months.

Also, remember the data don't take into account the recent events that have occurred since June 24th. First of all, Apple's "death grip antenna" fiasco would probably cause interest in Apple smartphones to decline somewhat. Also, remember the problems with Droid Incredible shortages, which would likely cause consumer interest to decline for HTC. However, any way you slice it, this news does not bode well for Motorola. And with the recent discovery that the Droid X's bootloader being locked-down, consumer interest may again shift away from Motorola.

For another pictorial comparison, here is the comparison solely between HTC and Motorola:

And what about overall satisfaction for the top smartphone brands? Apple leads the pack by far, with HTC and Motorola limping in second and third place:

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To me, the above chart to me shows a clear Apple bias to this report. It seems highly unlikely that a 100% impartial sample group would have such an inclination toward Apple, and distaste towards every other smartphone brand. Therefore, I would take all these findings with a grain of salt. What do you think? Is this a doomsday prediction for Motorola? Or a worthless Apple-biased survey?

Source: ChangeWave Research
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[crvols]

This seems to contradict other information I have seen that the Android operating systems is surpassing Apple. Even if you combine the HTC and Motorola it does not appear that way in this sample.

 

[wuyanks]

This seems to contradict other information I have seen that the Android operating systems is surpassing Apple. Even if you combine the HTC and Motorola it does not appear that way in this sample.

Agreed. Something fishy about this survey IMO.

 

[Darkseider]

This research firm is full of CRAP. it isn't a completely random poll of 10k or 15k people it is a poll of accepted members:

How We Do It

This poll can simply be tailored to the membership and means absolutely nothing. The best would be a blind poll amongst smartphone customers across all 4 national carriers.

 

[mtkregs]

So, the survey was completed on the iPhone4 release date? Do you think that all of the iPhone4 hype that was force-fed to consumers had any influence on these results?

@ChangeWave Research...do the survey again now. Select the people you survey randomly. Don't survey people that are walking into AT&T and Sprint stores. Oh, and I'll bet that your results would be different for the simple fact that the iPhone4 is in the wild and people are having to apply duct tape to the surrounding casing in order to keep decent reception.

 

[Sweettooth]

I call collaborative propaganda!

 

[johnomaz]

One downside to this survey is that Motorola, HTC, Samsung, etc made Android phones. Apple is the only one that makes phones for iOS. Being a former iPhone owner...well, three iPhones...I wonder how many of those people already have an iPhone and are simply upgrading to the new model. How many are new iPhone users. I finally got rid of my iPhone today actually, <3 my new DroidX. Its amazing. Very happy. Also, all you hear is iPhone this and iPhone that and how amazing they are. Then you think of other manufactures and how long they have been around. Perhaps before the iPhone was on the market, people had bad experiences with Motorola or Samsung or whatever it is devices.

 

[INFERNO]

I'm sure they were frustrated about the droid x being locked so they crafted this info to try and make motorola think its solid info and they will lose tons of business.

 

[huskerkate]

i'm pretty sure this "survey" is crap. i saw an actual news article a month ago or so that studied simple platform numbers. RIM is still leading, but declining. the Android platform is the next most popular, based on sheer numbers (and rising), followed by Apple platform. Android has surpassed Apple...