So, this might not be a fair comparison. But when are comparisons ever fair? This almost makes you wish all the flagships were announced in the same month or so. But J.D. Power’s put together a study to find out how the four major phone launches compared in the past 9-10 months. In this survey they included the iPhone 5, Blackberry Z10, Samsung Galaxy S4 and the Nokia Lumia 920. They broke it down into four categories. The first being the number of launch day conversations, brand appeal, brand criticism, and Features. If you’re an iPhone lover (honestly, I have no idea why you’re on an Android site then), you’re not going to like some of the results.
As far as launch day conversations go, the iPhone 5 owned the competition. Bringing in 1.7 million conversations. Followed by the Blackberry Z10 at 300,000. I believe the Blackberry Z10 did so well because they had been teasing Blackberry 10 for a few years and the few Blackberry fans were really excited about the launch. Next was brand appeal. Apple, Blackberry/RIM and Nokia were really close. Within 1% of each other, while Samsung sat at 20%. Brand appeal is basically about conversation around the brand itself.
This next section is the surprising one. Brand criticism, where there are comments speaking negatively about the brand. The iPhone led that category at 20%. Which isn’t particularly a good thing, at least for Apple. Followed by the Blackberry Z10, Lumia 920 and the Galaxy S4 came in last. Then finally they studied conversations about features of each phone. To no one’s surprise, the Galaxy S4 was on top. Samsung did throw everything, and the kitchen sink, in the Galaxy S4. So it’s not surprising that it took 56% followed by the Lumia 920, iPhone 5 and Blackberry Z10 at the bottom.
Some of the stats really aren’t surprising. But it does show us that Samsung does still have some ground to make up among its competitors. They are doing well with brand recognition, but they have a bit more work to do to catch up to Apple, Nokia and even Blackberry. I doubt it’ll take them too long. Did any of these numbers surprise you?