iPhone Users Make Loyal Customers

A new study finds that iPhone owners are the most loyal smartphones users and references customers’ personal investments in Apple’s products as helping the phone keep a retention rate north of 80%.

A report released on Thursday by the research company GfK demonstrates that 84% of current iPhone owners plan to buy another Apple phone when they replace their phone.

The Study

The study was conducted over 4,500 interviews of smartphone owners in more than 8 countries, spanning 4 continents. The iPhone had the highest retention rate, while consumers using the Android OS had a 60% retention rate and consumers with BlackBerry handsets had a 48% retention rate.

GfK analyst Ryan Garner says that an average of around 63% of respondents plan to replace their current phone with another that uses the same OS. Manufacturers are struggling to get behind the most successful companies as the mobile market quickly becomes oversaturated.

Key Features

Garner notes that the more services and features that a consumer uses in a particular OS environment, the more loyal they become. Almost 20% of consumers that own both an iPhone and an iPad think that changing to another OS would be more challenging than switching bank accounts, gas, or electricity providers.

"Those who are satisfied with their current set-up will be difficult to tempt to a new platform and the more services they use, the greater a consumer’s loyalty to a brand,” Garner said.

With more than 70% of consumers saying that features and easy access to content are major factors in sticking to their current systems, the push for a value-added ecosystem is growing in importance for the industry.

The iCloud and iTunes applications from Apple are terrific examples of producing an experience that customers enjoy and point out as a great reason for sticking with their operating systems.

Three Primary Factors

All in all, the study found that participants cited three primary reasons for not wanting to switch:

• being too invested in applications to switch devices
• claiming that learning how to use a new device would be too tedious
• seeing the transition of all of their digital content from one device to another to be too much of a hassle.

"The smartphone providers that create harmonious user experiences will be able to increase consumer loyalty, as consumers find it more trouble than it’s worth to switch their digital life on their smartphone – as well as increasingly on tablets too," Garner notes. "In a competitive market, brands that invest in user experience will yield great results."

But, easy-to-use devices and content integration aren’t the only important factors in retention. Almost three quarters of smartphone owners think that it’s important to have access to their digital content on multiple platforms. In this arena, Apple’s iTunes platform actually misses out since the stuff you download can only be used in iOS devices.

Garner thinks that, keeping the findings in mind, the best thing for an OS producer to do would be to release a platform that’s innovative and easy to use.

"Those in dominant market positions, who create amazing user experiences, are potentially in the strongest position, and will be the most difficult to challenge in terms of capturing market share,” Garner said.

AppleInsider Photo by : Apple