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9 out of 10 iPhone owners plan to take another bite of the Apple. That’s according to research from investment bank UBS about which mobile ecosystems users want to stick with when the time comes for a new phone.
89 per cent of current iPhone owners surveyed intend to stay with Apple and buy another iPhone the next time they plonk down their hard-earned for a new smart phone. They’d better dig out their chequebooks then, as the iPhone 5 is just around the corner.
The next highest retention rate is HTC, but with just 39 per cent of owners surveyed saying they’ll stick with the Taiwanese company. When less than half of your customers say they’d buy another product from you, it’s got to be a cause for concern.
Android phones in general fared better in the ‘stickiness’ stakes: 60 per cent of those surveyed will get another Android phone when their current Google-powered blower gets boring. But 30 per cent of them want to cross the park to Apple.
Only a third of BackBerry owners will stick with their BlackBerry, which must be worrying for the boys and girls at Research in Motion.
The research, called the Global Telecom Equipment Analyser, assesses trends in mobile use. In one section, the researchers asked 515 smart phone-owning executives at 30 European and American mobile networks about their habits. That’s not many people in the grand scheme of things — and as business-minded businessy types they might not be representative of the greater population — so you’d be forgiven for taking the results with a pinch of salt.
Still, the results make sense: as the app ecosystem that’s been around longest, the iPhone will have many users committed by virtue of the many apps they’ve downloaded. Plus new apps generally come to the iPhone and iPad first, with Android apps usually following later. After a couple of years of app use, iPhone owners probably won’t want to switch — but if they do, Android has a less restricted and faster growing range of apps to choose from.
Are you planning to trade in your phone for a different operating system, or will you upgrade to the next version of the same phone? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below or on our Facebook page.
