If your name is Samsung then this year has probably not exactly been your favorite year. Up until this year, the ride has been pretty sweet with the company becoming the largest smartphone maker in the world. Not to mention, their devices becoming increasing popular year-on-year. Furthermore, they have also managed to create quite a dedicated fan base which are hardcore Samsung fans (you know who you are). Of course, they have had to deal with their whole ‘I Hate Apple’ thing, but that’s part and parcel with being Samsung. If anything, their ongoing battles with Apple only further highlight their position as the dominant Android manufacturer. In short, the alpha dog of the Android world.
That said though, this year, has not quite been like that. Instead, throughout the year (basically every quarter) the results have came in that they are showing the lowest sales figures they have seen in the past few years. The figures have increasingly got worse for each quarter, with the end-of-year sales accumulating to also show this is the worst year for the last few years. If that was all not enough, Samsung has also had to deal with these pesky new OEMs like Huawei and Xiaomi who are suddenly snapping at their heels, saying that they will soon be the new number one. Yes, if your name is Samsung, then this year, you probably just want to forget about.
Well, listen up Samsung. As the year closes, it actually seems like there is still some love for you. In fact, it seems of all the OEMs you are the fairest in the land…at least in America. Results from the recent ‘American Customer Satisfaction Index’ (ACSI) shows that Samsung has the highest customer satisfaction rating of all the big OEMs. Now, this will be particularly sweet for the South Korean tech giant as this is the first time that they have scored higher on the scale than Apple. After all, America is technically Apple’s home ground. Just like you might expect Samsung to score better in South Korea, you would also expect Apple to score better in the US. And that has pretty much been the case until now. However, the current results do now show that Samsung are number one and Apple have slipped down into second place. In terms of the actual numbers, Samsung scored an 81 on the Satisfaction Index which equates to a 6.6% increase on last year. In comparison, Apple have dropped down to 79 on the index which equates to a drop of 2.5%. If your name is not Samsung or Apple and you are wondering where you are, then both Nokia and Motorola scored 77 on the Index while HTC, BlackBerry and LG scored 75, 74 and 73 respectively. All in all, quite high scores all-round. So there you go Samsung… it’s not all bad.