This morning, Nielsen released a new batch of survey results of U.S. smartphone consumers looking to buy a new phone and it looks like there’s a greater percentage of people who want Android phones than iPhones now.
Does this mean that Android phones have made a leap over iPhones in terms of desirability?
Perhaps.
Let’s assume that Nielsen used proper polling techniques and polled the same number of people between July 2010 and September 2010 as it did from January 2011 through March 2011. (The statistician in me always gets reflexively suspicious when people use percentage numbers instead of actual numbers when comparing) What happened between July 2010 and September 2010? That’s right, the iPhone 4 was announced and shipped. If you’ll remember, those things were really hard to find in stock during that same time period. What happened between January 2011 and March 2011? Well, we had CES where a bunch of new Android phones were announced, including several 4G LTE models. We also had the widespread news that the iPhone 5 would be delayed past Apple’s customary summer launch period for new iPhones.
When you add it up, it’s a reasonable conclusion to arrive at that people want to buy whatever platform has the latest technology out at the time in order to maximize the “life” of their phone. We’re almost a year into the lifespan of the iPhone 4 — if you were to buy a new smartphone, how compelling would “old tech” be?
If Nielsen were to do this same poll between, say, September 2011 and December 2011, I’d bet you money that more people will “desire” iPhones than Android phones, assuming that Apple releases the iPhone 5 during that time period. Consumer preferences are fickle, yes, but they’re a predictable fickle.
What do you think? Which smartphone would you buy in the next year?
via NielsenWire
