14 July 2010

Hard Truth: Of Smartphone Owners,
Only A Third Will Consider Getting A Nokia

According to the latest wave of YouGov’s Smartphone Mobile Internet Experience study YouGov study, the Finnish mobile telecommunications giant is now lagging even further behind its competitors than six months ago.

Of smartphone owners, only a third will consider getting a Nokia as their next handset, compared to 46% in December 2009. On top of that, only ten percent of smartphone owners expect to purchase a Nokia, a drop of nine percent over the last six months. In contrast, Apple continues to hold onto the lion’s share of the market, with 56% of smartphone owners considering and 41% expecting to get an Apple handset next time round.

However, despite Nokia’s decline in popularity, more smartphone owners are still considering a Nokia as their future phone than BlackBerry (31%) or HTC (28%), which could be explained by the brand’s past success.

But Nokia’s fall is also apparent from a decline in the number of people likely to recommend the brand to a friend or colleague. Nokia’s recommend score dropped by 15% in six months to just 12%. Apple, by contrast, has a 70% recommendation score.

Key reasons mentioned by those moving away from Nokia are the lack of available programmes, or ‘apps’, and perceived poor quality of the operating system, as well as merely wanting a change of brand. With smartphones taking over the phonescape – it’s interesting to note that a recent YouGov SixthSense report found that just over a third of all 16-39 year old males as well as a fifth of female 16-39 year olds now own a smartphone.

*click to enlarge

Russell Feldman, Research Manager in YouGov’s technology and telecoms team said, 'Where Nokia once led the market, it has drastically fallen by the wayside...significantly outperformed by both Apple’s Apps store and Android Marketplace. The results of our data consistently show that the market leader is fast becoming an also-ran in the smartphone market. New products, software and apps are needed soon if Nokia is to keep up with its rivals.'

Looking ahead, three quarters of respondents (74%) believed that handsets will become less reliable and that this is unacceptable.  The vast majority (88%) said that they are happy to wait until handsets have proven reliability before purchasing – suggesting consumers are becoming more cautious as a result of negative experiences.