While the sexiest mobile headlines of late have been owned by the forthcoming BlackBerry 10 and anything with an Apple rumor attached to it, the facts show that Samsung smartphones are drawing more than just hype these days. They’re also selling like the proverbial hotcakes.
According to the latest consumer smartphone survey from ChangeWave, momentum is “catapulting Samsung to its all-time high in a ChangeWave survey, even as Apple demand remains strong three months after the iPhone 5 release.”
The December 11-27, 2012 survey took a close-up look at North American smartphone trends. And Samsung’s presence was impossible to ignore.
As Chuck Jones of Forbes outlines, Apple still has almost a 2.5x higher purchase intention vs. Samsung. But – and this is key to understanding Samsung’s momentum – the percentage of people who are planning on purchasing Samsung “has increased over 4x from just 5% in the September 2011 quarter to 21% in the December 2012 quarter.”
“Apple has seen a steady increase of purchase intentions from the 30%s in the 2008/2009 timeframe to the 40%s in 2010/2011 to the 50%s in 2012,” Jones observes. “With every new iPhone starting with the 4 the iPhone purchase intention has been higher than the previous version. However, the dropoff one quarter after a new iPhone has been introduced has been the greatest for the iPhone 5 with a 19 point drop vs. 11 points for the 4S, 13 points for the 4 and 8 points for the 3GS.”
ChangeWave is publicly referring to Samsung’s recent climb as “unprecedented,” particularly in the face of such heated competition in the smartphone space.
