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1.12.2010 Brand loyalty low among smartphone users

Consumers owning smartphones such as the iPhone and BlackBerry often exhibit low levels of brand loyalty, a multimarket survey has found. Research firm GfK interviewed 2,653 mobile phone subscribers from Brazil, China, Germany, Spain, the UK and US. Overall, 56% of respondents had not decided which manufacturer to do business with when next buying a new device. Just 25% of the panel planned to retain the operating system they currently used, reaching 59% among Apple customers. Figures fell to 35% concerning Research in Motion's BlackBerry and 28% regarding alternatives powered by Google's Android. Nokia's Symbian scored 24%, having recently appointed its first chief marketing officer, in keeping with a wider effort to enhance the company's image and standing. Microsoft, which introduced the Windows Phone 7 earlier this year, only registered 21%.

GfK suggested that as web access, geo-location services and high-resolution cameras are essentially standardised, options like application stores now play a central role in consumer thinking. "Loyalty with a handset is a lot more complicated these days in that people buy into experiences at the high-end level," Ryan Garner, a GfK analyst, told Reuters.

B.L. 1.12.2010