In the aftermath last week’s Broadway style announcement of the Samsung Galaxy S IV in New York City it seemed that everyone and their mother had an opinion of the new smartphone. From the Apple fan boy ripping it to shreds to the Android homer singing it’s praises, there was no shortage of articles and blog posts written about Samsung’s 2013 flagship. While everyone has their own trusted source of information when it comes to tech, the words of Carl Howe, Vice President, Research & Data Sciences at the Yankee Group, should carry a little more weight than others.
The Yankee Group is one of, if not the most trusted independent technology research and consulting firm in the world, and while they may not be batting a thousand they tend to be pretty good with their assessment of a given product. Mr. Howe for his part described the Galaxy S IV as “the Galaxy S IIIS”, meaning that even with some spec bumps and a couple of more bells and whistles on the software side, the basic design of the phone remained unchanged.
Writing on the Yankee Group’s website Howe went on to say:
“The S IV is just another iteration on the Galaxy design to be slightly bigger, faster and with a few new apps. We fully expect the Galaxy S IV to be an excellent flagship phone for Samsung, but Yankee Group doesn’t see the S IV allowing Samsung to gain ground against Apple in the crucial U.S. market. According to Yankee Group’s 2013 U.S. Consumer Survey, March, only about 15 percent of consumers intend to buy a Samsung phone within the next six months, while 40 percent intend to buy Apple iPhones within that period. That’s actually a slight decline from the December quarter.”
Another indicator pointed to by Howe is brand loyalty, a category in which Apple beats Samsung by 24 percentage points. According to their research while 61% of people who already own a Samsung smartphone are committed to buy another device made by the South Korean manufacturer, that number jumps to 85% when the same question is posed to iPhone owners. Added Howe “Unless Samsung works very hard to change consumers’ minds in the next six months, we actually see Apple gaining ownership share on Samsung in the U.S. in 2013 rather than the other way around.”
I know that there were a lot of people making their McKayla Maroney face after last weeks announcement so what are your thoughts? Do you agree with Carl Howe’s numbers or do you think they are way off base? let us know in the comments.