Even though the Galaxy S III has been out for several months, it continues to be a very hot item among buyers. Among those planning to buy a Samsung smartphone in the next 90 days, a full 69% say they’ll be getting the SGS3. Interestingly, 23% say that they’d rather get the Galaxy Note II phablet, clearly indicating an increased interest in bigger screens. Indeed, 27% of respondents said they want a phone with at least a 5-inch screen. All said, 21% of consumers in the market for a smartphone say that they’ll get a Samsung in the next 90 days, compared to the 13% the last time ChangeWave did the survey. The iPhone is still on top at 50%.

You would think that with this surge that we’d see an equivalent surge in Android. That’s not necessarily the case. The same survey is showing that just 48% of Android users are “very satisfied” with their phones, compared to the 71% of iOS users. Interestingly, 53% of people with Windows Phone 8 devices say that they’re very satisfied. That’s only marginally better than Android, but it does show that WP8 has promise. Nokia’s gotta like that, especially since its “Very Satisfied” rating also increased to 56% this quarter.

Given this rise in Windows Phone and in Samsung, you’ve got to think that the combination of the two in the Samsung Ativ S would be the biggest winner. Maybe it just needs a GNote II-sized display.

[Source]

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The NPD Group just did a little bit of market research and while it found that there was a 9 percent growth in smartphone unit sales in Q2 2012 compared to the same time last year, that growth was driven by increases in prepaid smartphone sales and not the on-contract variety. In fact, sales of post-paid smartphones remained flat.

“Prepaid smartphones are no longer just cheap, also-ran options, focused on older and less capable phones,” said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at The NPD Group. “As the smartphone market matures, and as growth slows, carriers have been smart to aggressively market some of their best current smartphones on a pre-paid basis to a new set of customers, in order to keep sales humming along.”

Not surprisingly, Apple (31%) and Samsung (24%) are leading the charge in terms of market share, followed by HTC (15%), Motorola (12%) and LG (6%). You can pick up cheaper variants of the Samsung Galaxy series, for instance, on a prepaid basis. Of course, they’d prefer if you bought a Galaxy Note or a Galaxy S III, but they want to keep putting new phones in your hands.

While prepaid smartphone sales continue to increase, I haven’t found that wireless carriers are getting much more competitive to capture this growing market. Let’s not forget that AT&T no longer allows GoPhone customers on per-day or per-minute prepaid to purchase prepaid data packages. In order to do that, you need to be on a per-month prepaid plan.

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Instead, according to a recent consumer survey, the vast majority of users simply utilize the “personal assistant” to initiate phone calls and to send text messages. That hardly takes advantage of all the “natural language processing” that Siri promises, but you can see how they would be the most frequently used commands. The irony is that you didn’t need Siri to make phones or dictate text messages; you could already do that with previous iPhone models.

That said, it’s good to see that a solid 87% of iPhone 4S users are taking advantage of Siri at least on a monthly basis. At the same time, 32% never used Siri for music, 35% never used Siri to set a meeting, and 30% have never used Siri to send an e-mail message. Three quarters of users are generally satisfied (or very satisfied) with Siri, with just 9% saying they were unsatisfied. Not bad.

[Source]

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Heading into the holiday season last year, everyone said that the Kindle Fire was going to be a huge draw, and it was. Now that we’ve had some time to recover from our new year’s hangovers, it seems that interest in Amazon’s cheap Android tablet is really starting to wane. Now, why would that be?

This comes from a report published by ChangeWave. In December, four percent of those surveyed said they were “very likely” to buy a Kindle Fire, but that figure has been cut in half to two percent in January. The “somewhat likely” crowd dropped from 13% to 10% over the same period.

Of course, this could be due to two very typical phenomena. First, demand for almost anything drops after the holidays. We’re all broke from all that shopping. Second, a lot of people really did buy the Kindle Fire over the holidays, so they obviously aren’t interested anymore in buying another one. To be fair, 54% of Kindle Fire owners are “very satisfied” compared to 49% of other tablets, though iPad owners still lead the pack at 74%.

The good news for Amazon, though, is that the Fire is doing exactly what it needed to do: offer kindling to ignite more purchases through Amazon. They say that 29% of Kindle owners are expected to spend more money at Amazon than they had before, compared to 19% of non-Kindle owners.

The post Who Doused the Amazon Kindle Fire Demand? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Compare that to just 38% from Dell, 38% from Samsung, 31% from Motorola, 31% from HP, 24% from RIM, and 21% from Barnes and Noble. What’s crazy is that all of these other companies already have tablets out there, whereas Amazon is only rumored to be working on something. Not surprisingly, the iPad is still the tablet of choice for the general masses, but price would give Amazon a leg up.

If an Android tablet had similar features as the base model $499 iPad, 79% of people would for less than $250. The tipping point seems to be around the $300 price point, as that’s where 48% of people would choose the cheaper (Amazon) Android tab over Apple’s offering. Indeed, 48% of those who responded said that low price was the “most important” feature when buying their next tablet.

There are already some $300 tablets out there, but it’s not really until you get in the $399 range that you find suitable competitors like the Asus Eee Pad Transformer. If Amazon were able to get even less horsepower but at the $299 price point, it could have a real winner. The question is whether it would cannibalize sales of the Kindle.

Disclaimer: The source of the surveyed consumers is not known and whether or not they were Amazon customers or a study conducted on behalf of Amazon is also not known.

Source: Retrovo

The post Survey says Amazon Android tablet could be a threat to Apple’s iPad appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

As of year end 2010, a little over a third (31%) of all mobile users in the United States were using smartphones. According to Nielsen, Asian/Pacific Islander and Hispanic consumers were the most likely to own a smartphone with both at 45%, followed by African-American consumers at 33% and, with only 27%, White mobile users were the least likely to choose a smartphone over a feature phone in their mobile purchases. It was also found that there is a significant skew towards the younger mobile consumers in the population as being smartphone users.

Research data from Nielsen goes on to categorize each ethnic group and the percentages of that group that prefer specific smartphone operating systems. Preferences among White and Hispanic mobile users are nearly identical with similar numbers for the three major platforms: Android, BlackBerry and iPhone. Compare that to the other two ethnic groups, both of which seem to prefer one platform to the others. It was found that 31% of the smartphone-owning African-American population had BlackBerry devices, and 36% of Asian/Pacific Islanders owned an iPhone.

We can only assume why these numbers turned out to be this way, whether it is only a coincidence or if there really is a cultural or a universal preference among people of certain races, but it is interesting to see where the pieces are falling.

[HuffPo]

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Which raises the question, who ever trusted a bank in the first place?

Polling an “informed public” of 25 to 64 year-olds, the study asked participants how much they trust each industry “to do what is right” on a scale of 1 to 9. Only answers of 6 through 9 were counted as positive, bringing U.S. public trust of technology companies from 78 percent in 2008 to 73 today, but of automotive industries to 49 percent from 32 in 2009.

Only 25 percent of Americans now trust banks to do what’s right.

Edelman states that companies such as Toyota have taken advantage of a new trust architecture where a company promotes itself as a “profit with purpose” institution and leverages social media to build a personality, provoke engagement and create repetition of its message.

What do you think? Are companies doing enough to gain trust of a skeptic public? Weigh in with your comments below.

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Right now, about 7% of businesses provide tablets to their employees for work-related duties. That sounds pretty good, considering that tablets are still a relatively new phenomenon, but that number is set to explode very soon. In fact, that number is expected to double in the next couple of months.

This comes by way of a survey conducted by ChangeWave. Not surprisingly, the Apple iPad is by far the most popular tablet device being provided by companies to their employees. It accounts for 82% of the corporate tablet market, compared to 11% for HP (Slate) and 7% for Dell (Streak). The iPad owners are happier too with 69% very satisfied and 28% somewhat satisfied. When HP Slate corporate users were polled, only 23% were very satisfied and 46% were somewhat satisfied.

Perhaps the most interesting statistic to come out of this survey, though, is the explosive growth expected in the next quarter. An incredible 14% of businesses surveyed say that they will be buying tablets in the first quarter of 2011. That’s double the current demand, representing almost exponential growth. It won’t be long before outfitting employees with tablets could become just as commonplace as outfitting them with smartphones.

Maybe this growth can be attributed to the upcoming RIM PlayBook? Not exactly. Of those companies expected to buy tablets in Q1, only 9% are opting for the BlackBerry option. An overwhelming 78% are still turning to Cupertino for their tablet needs moving forward.

This just goes to show you that the iPad may look like a consumer-friendly media consumption device, but it’s got plenty of potential on Wall Street too. It’s a good time to be a tablet maker… if you’re Apple.

[Investor Place]

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