A US survey from Customer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) has shown that 20% of Apple’s customers over the last year were switching from Android devices. On the other hand, just 7% of Samsung device buyers were former iPhone owners.
The survey shows that Apple are doing a good job when it comes to achieving customer loyalty as well as snaring users who are already familiar with smartphone devices. However, the statistics also revealed that Samsung are outperforming Apple when it comes to first time smartphone users, claiming around 37% of users switching over from feature phones while Apple had only 26%. Samsung also did well among customers who were already Android fans, with 43% of their customers over the past year being Android (though not necessarily Samsung) users.
Among people switching brands Samsung claimed more of its new customers from HTC, Motorola and Nokia while Apple was taking the lions share of folks abandoning their Blackberry devices.
The survey collected data on age and income among consumers, revealing iPhone owners to be better educated and richer than Samsung users on average. The survey also showed (perhaps more surprisingly) that Apple customers are also younger on average than Samsung, despite the higher cost of iPhones and a marketing campaign from Samsung targeting young people in the US.
