Apple Is The Most Aspired Brand In India: Brand Satisfaction Survey

If there is one thing common between you and me in today’s world, then it would be that we both are smartphone users. We like to stay connected and a smartphone exactly does that for us, aside from that it also helps us travel with maps and lets us shop at fingertips. With so many reasons, there are times when we tend to have a love-hate relationship with our phones. And infidelity in this relationship starts appearing a year after using the phone or in some cases even earlier, if you’ve made a bad purchase.

You might then start thinking to switch to another phone. That’s the time when your geeky friends will suggest you phones of different brands which will suit your exact requirements, or you’ll visit PriceBaba.com and keep playing with the sliders to get various suggestions. And eventually, you’ll find that one phone of your choice.

We at PriceBaba.com tried to figure out how many users are really satisfied with their current smartphone brand. The results turned out quite surprising. All our findings are based on the survey which was taken by 300 respondents. Our survey included rating their current smartphone brand, how loyal they are to it and if at all they would switch in future, then which would be their preferred brand.

Let’s deep dive straight away into our findings:

Brand Owners:

• Out of 300 respondents, a majority of 21.5% people owned Samsung phones. It’s not surprising as over the years Samsung has become the number one smartphone brand in India.
• Motorola comes in second at 14%. The company was the first in India who managed to successfully sell phones online only. Their value for money devices like Moto G and Moto E have continued to remain popular.
• Apple holds the third spot with 9.5% share. While the industry and customers likewise are shifting towards the trend of affordable smartphones, there’s still a considerably large amount of users who buy Apple’s expensive products which is because of the company’s assumed rich-symbolic status in Indian society.
• Xiaomi is the only new-Chinese brand which has managed to gain a position among the top five within just 9-months of entering the Indian market. It has outgunned established players like LG, HTC etc. The company’s budget-friendly devices with power packed specs are serving as a threat to the big players. Also, they’re largely responsible for popularizing ‘affordable smartphone’ and ‘online flash sale’ trends in India.

Average Brand Score:

All the respondents were asked to rate their current smartphone brand based on their experience with their phone. Let’s have a look at the brands that had enough responses to calculate an average rating.

LG: LG which scored 8.9 gave the highest user satisfaction to our respondents. Probably because of the LG Nexus series which runs on Stock Android and is always the first to receive any update from Google.

Apple: Second comes Apple’s with a score of 8.5. It’s no surprise as the company has a long-standing reputation for shipping excellent quality products.

Xiaomi: Third is Xiaomi with a score as same as Apple. The company has pretty much won the audience by delivering products that offer great value-for-money.

HTC: Despite just having a 5% share from our respondents, HTC did manage to earn a good score of 7.8 points. Like Apple, HTC has always maintained a check on quality and their new phablets, namely, Desire 820 and 816 have gained mass appeal as the pricing is right.

Samsung: Samsung with the highest brand share scored only 6.2 on the satisfaction scale. The low score can be blamed to the Samsung’s lower-end products which have never gotten software updates and TouchWiz UI which in general has been laggy on those phones. Hence, the user dissatisfaction.

Loyal Users:

The next findings which we derived are the number of people who were not willing to switch from their existing brand. Judging by the avalanche of variety at the disposal of consumers today, 35% is a fair number and brands present in this share should take a pat on their back for keeping their users satisfied.

• Samsung – Out of the 35% of loyal users, Samsung again takes up the top spot with 23% share. The company owns a wide variety of devices and they invest a lot in marketing them. Also, their phones have the best resale value and users tend to use Samsung phones over longer period due to that.
• Apple – Apple comes second with 21%. This could be owed to the fact that Apple has exceptional after sales service. They are also known for a clutter-free user interface and a very powerful camera.
• Xiaomi: Third in the list is the Chinese manufacturer, Xiaomi. Within a year in India, they have already captured a significant amount of attention and generated a loyal fan base for itself in no time. The combo of power-packed hardware and an affordable price is their winning mantra.
• Motorola: Sharing the 3rd spot with Xiaomi, the company got back in the game through near-perfect phones priced aptly.
• HTC: Next comes HTC by contributing for 11% of the share. Over the years, the company has garnered a fair amount of loyal users, thanks to excellent hardware and recently, they’ve become more known for their best-in-class front-firing stereo speakers.

Preferred Brands:

So out of the 65% who wanted to make a switch, here are the brands that were most preferred by them.

• Winning the race with a really high margin is Apple by scoring 27%. After scoring 8.5 points as an average satisfaction score and having the most number of retained users, no wonder it is the most desired brand for people who haven’t tried it yet.
• Scoring almost half than Apple is Samsung with 13.5%. We had the highest number of Samsung respondents and also these users were the most loyal ones to the brand. Samsung has a varied product line up for everyone tastes, and along with that they’re known to promote their phones with big spends on marketing.
• Contributing with 11.5%, Motorola is at the third position out of all brands. Motorola had the second highest share of respondents and got an average score of 7.75. The online sales model along with the value for money devices have surely gained attention especially coming from a big old brand.
• HTC comes forth just at 10.5% behind Motorola. When it comes to loyalty, HTC users have proved to be loyal and also the brand scored an average score of 8 points which is pretty good. HTC has been coming up with different phones for the mid-range users, and this will serve as a good choice for the people willing to switch.

Kushang Dholakia also contributed to this report.