What Do We Want? Duelling Stats about What Drives Smartphone Purchases (updated)

As I was preparing the cameraphone dscussions last month, I was struck by how long is been since I had seen consumer preference data about why we buy our phones. It seemed a few years ago that any week there was some survey about what people were looking for. But its been a very long while that I saw something interesting in that space. So I had a little time-killer project to do some searches at random moments of connectivity. I knew there is that research still being done but it somehow has not really broken pat the news threshold in recent months or years.


Update 5 March 2015 - YouGov just out with new US survey about thin phones vs battery life. Will add to the bottom of the article..


So I found a couple of 2014 surveys that are very interesting and shed a lot of light individually but are somewhat conflicted in their overall findings. They are somewhat duelling statistics in fact. But they are recent and the smartphone industry is a global juggernaut worth over 300 Billion dollars and growing strong, and for a global industry its also the most competitive of all time, by number of global giant corporations that compete directly against each other in such a global business. So lets talk consumers. What do we want?

I found three surveys (and one very interesting somewhat related analysis story that is fresh for today). So in May of 2014, IDC released a nice chart of the 10 biggest drivers of smartphone purchase - by platform! It divided the preferences by Android, iOS and Windows Phone, each getting their Top 10 (the same Top 10 across all three). This was based on a huge international online survey of 50,000 consumers in 25 countries. Top driver across all 3 platforms? Battery life. Ok. Then lets go to our second contestant...

Kantar Worldpanel Comtech released its findings (pdf file) of a Q1 2014 consumer survey of only USA smartphone owners and found that actual 4G/LTE network connectivity ranked tops for US buyers and battery life came in only 5th behind large screen size, reliabilty and good camera. But 'type of network' ranked only 6th in the IDC survey for Android and iOS buyers, and dead-last for Windows Phone buyers. Wow, big variance in the findings. Usually consumer surveys find similar findings not this wildly fluctuating ones. But back to Kantar. They didnt just publish an infographic. They released a pdf with tons of data and explanations, including lots of other type of purchase data such as where we buy, retail or online, how we decide (recommendations by friends is tops) and how much retail can influence our purchase (no surprise lots). So lets go to our third contestant. 

In August 2014, ZD Net reported on a uSwitch survey of UK consumers and what features would make the UK smartphone buyer select a given model handset (wow, that sounds like a really good survey) and for those who don't know the international comparisons, the UK is well ahead of the USA and ahead of average Europe in smartphone adoption rate, so its one of the more advanced smartphone markets, a very good country to draw lessons from. So what did it find? Long battery life came out on top, almost 9 out of 10 customers found that as a reason to buy. Second best was waterproofing (67%) and third on the list? An optical zoom capability for the camera (66%). So yeah with a wafer-thin margin these came 2 and 3. So two out of three UK smartphone buyers would select the waterproof phone over the one that wasn't, and haha, supporting my desire of better cameras on phones, also astonishingly high number 2 out of 3 UK customers would pick the smartphone with optical zoom over one that didn't have it. (and by current tech, trying to make an optical zoom cameraphone also waterproof would be quite expensive and likely heavy and bulky so it would usually be one or the other, haha Sony Xperia Z3 or Samsung Galaxy K Zoom not both)

Ok Battery life again came on top with uSwitch and overwhelmingly in that survey. Now first, whats missing? None of the surveys mentioned price. I can't believe it doesn't register in this choice. So we should consider these as indicative but not comprehensive findings. The huge discrepancy where an international and UK survey put battery life clearly on top but the international survey doesn't get battery life until 6th item, suggest we may have issues with methodology here.

In consumer surveys it matters very much how you phrase the question. So for example, if a US consumer is asked 'type of network' as the decision criterion, it is less obvious than '4G/LTE capability' which is more obvious to the US consumer about what this concerns. But if you do an international survey you can't really ask about 4G/LTE in countries where that is not yet commercially available..

Similarly if you ask for 'camera resolution' you will find a different interpretation by respondents than 'quality of camera'. Which helps explain why those got such a big difference. We know, we geeks, that these questions intend to ask about the same decision criteria but the normal non-geek consumer does not understand the terminology at that level and if the consumer doesn't really understand that point, of course they don't rate it as highly. But lets talk about the uSwitch survey just a but more. That seemed the most interesting until you look at what they found, and you notice its mainly a survey about advanced features like fingerprint scanners, bendable phones, optical zooms, waterproofing etc, that ignores the basics like a large screen or reliability etc. So it isn't really apples-to-apples comparison of a survey of similar items as the first two. But the uSwitch survey did include some fascinating data on tech on our phones that is used. Of the advanced features like eyeball tracking or fingeprint scanners, if you have it on your phone already, how many use it. Interesting stuff. They included the camera (haha, not an advanced feature) but not suprirsingly 99% of British smartphone owners use the camera on the phone at least some of the time. But get this, 30% of British smartphone owners use the camera at least once per day or more!

Ok, lets take their main findings and use a bit of math to give us a couple of reasonable charts. The two first surveys both provided the data broken into parts. IDC by the platforms (yet the variances are quite modest) and Kantar separated into 'functionality' and 'design'. So lets first reconstruct the data back into single chart form for both companies. For IDC, I used the end-of-year 2014 market shares as their weighting. For Kantar, I just intergrated both into once chart.

IDC Consumer Smartphone Top 10 Purchase Drivers (Global) 2014
Battery Life . . . . . . . . 57%
OS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37%
Screen Size . . . . . . . 36%
Touchscreen . . . . . . . 35%
Ease of Use . . . . . . . 35%
Network . . . . . . . . . . 27%
Brand . . . . . . . . .. . . 27%
Weight . . . . . . . . . . . 25%
Camera Resolution . .  25%
Browsing Speed . . . . . 24%
Source IDC ConsumerScape 360 survey May 2014, weighted average by TomiAhonen Consulting based on full year 2014 stats, Feb 26, 2015

Kantar WorldPanel Comtech US Smartphone Top 11 Purchase Drivers 2014 
4G/LTE . . . . . . . . . . . 48%
Screen Size . . . . . . . . 42%
Reliability . . . . . . . . . . 40%
Camera Quality . . . . . . 36%
Battery Life . . . . . . . . . 32%
Screen Quality . . . . . . . 29%
Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28%
Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . 22%
Processor . . . . . . . . . , 21%
Materials . . . . . . . . . . . 20%
Ability to Personalize . . 20%
Source Kantar WorldPanel Comtech Q1 2014

Note first, that these surveys were done before Apple launched its 6 series larger iPhones. So we can expect that screen size would factor even more relevantly now, a year after those surveys.

Because these didn't ask the same things (one didn't ask about reliablity, the other didn't ask about the OS, both scored near top), they still are not fully comparable across. But we can see that some items are in strong harmony - Screen Size was 2nd or 3rd in both surveys valued by 42% and 36% of respondents. Not suprising and very consistent with recent sales success of large-screen smartphones (aka Phablets). 

But several items are vastly different. Battery life tops one survey but comes in at 5th in the other. Camera quality ranks 4th in one but Camera resolution ranks 9th in the other. And there are plenty of items only one asked (or reported) that are at the bottom. So thats our 'research' haha.. Not very illuminating and some things are obviously missing like app stores and price.

Lets mention the uSwitch survey from the UK. This is mostly premium features, so its not the same type of survey as the above, but among premium features...

uSwitch Survey of UK Smartphone Buyers, Premium Features that Would Make Buyer Prefer a Phone:
Battery Life . . . . . . . . . . . . 89%
Waterproof . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67%
Optical Zoom . . . . . . . . . . . 66%
Screen Fingerprint Proof . . . 49%
Fingerprint Scanner . . . . . . 38%
Mobile Payment . . . . . . . . 35%
Pico Projector . . . . . . . . . . 32%
3D Display . . . . . . . . . . . . .26%
Voice Control . . . . . . . . . . . 26%
Flexible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18%
Source uSwitch Survey 

So there. Battery life again on top and waterproofing appears onto our lists now. A premium camera, in this case optical zoom, is highly desirable to UK consumers. Look at the huge drop to the rest of the features, a screen that repels fingerprints comes in at under 50% of British consumers wanting it and then fingerprint scanners don't even reach 4 out of 10 buyers.

Ok, this is submitted for your apporval, I can't really do more with this, except that this seems like a messy area and more research should be done that would find more data in harmony and more data that is 'comprehensive' ie covering real consumer needs completely. Certainly price will need to be asked and it would definitely hit the Top 10, probably Top 5 in the rankings. App Stores also should be asked but they would probably fall far lower. And that camera question should find a good terminology that gets to accurately measure what consumers want. Camera resolution is not the right terminology clearly, maybe camera quality is better term. (oh, and I'd love to see a physical QWERTY keyboard ability asked, especially one that was offered in a slider/folder format rather than the narrow Blackberry format that limits screen size, but that might be pushing it far too far at this stage of confusion even on the basics like battery life and camera quality)


Update 5 March 2015: Just spotted a brand new YouGov/Huffpo survey of US smartphone owners that asked explicity the thin phone vs battery life question that really is the crux of the issue. Which do you prefer. And by an overwhelming margin - more than 6 to 1 US smartphone owners would prefer a thicker smartphone that had a good battery than a thinner phone with bad battery life. Yes 73% to 12%. This point is now also tested in a consumer preference survey and should be beyond any doubt. The industry is obsessing on the thinnest phone model while that comes at a cost to the consumer... Hopefully we see some change to this later in 2015..


But if you wanted to have proof that your fave feature is or isn't relevant to your fave phone modes and their evolution, there it is. Pick your stat and be happy.

Now, there is a somewhat related finding also, just out today, published at PC World about the smartphone vs tablet wars, which lists 5 reasons why the phablet is killing the tablet. Good article with very good and rare research data in it too based on SpecOut. They find smartphones have better battery lives and better cameras than tablets. They also mention that smartphones have more apps. They argue that the phablet has hit a sweet spot in therms of screen size and also show stats of how smartphone and tablet populations differ, and have evolved, in terms of screen size (obviously smartphone screen sizes have grown as we know with the Phablet phenomenon). They find that phablet-size screens (over 5.2 inches by their division of the sizes) accounted for about 23% of all new smartphone MODELS released in 2014 (that does not mean actual shipments but rather model types, a cheaper phone typically ships in larger numbers so the actual numbers of phones sold were likely less than that).

So take a look. But we know that phablets were eating into tablet sales and already by Q4 of last year more phablets were sold than tablets and tablet sales are now peaking while smartphone sales keep growing at huge growth rates (inspited of the perennial nonsense articles from America that their sales are somehow at saturation haha).

 

Comments

[baron99]

Latest Windows Phone news. It looks like they died while they were "all in" and "waiting for Moore's Law" and now the obituaries are coming out.

http://bgr.com/2015/02/24/windows-phone-vs-android-vs-ios/

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/idc-android-ios-crushing-windows-phone-blackberry-smartphone-market/2015-02-25

It's as true as ever: NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!!!! :-)

[baron99]

Ooops! Missed one. WP 10 is also DOA because NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE! LoL

http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/199817-windows-phone-10-is-dead-before-it-even-arrives

[baron99]

Insight into Why developers don't like WP ....some background information for Tomi, who I am sure has heard similar stories from other developers.

https://gigaom.com/2015/02/26/this-may-be-why-the-pebble-isnt-supported-on-windows-phone/

[Catriona]

No surprise that LTE tops the list in the U.S. We have 4% of the world's population and 50% of its LTE subscriptions right now.

[John]

It are rumours that maybe Android apps coming to Windows Phone:
"Microsoft might put Android apps on Windows Phone"

http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/microsoft-might-bring-android-apps-to-windows-phone-1281244

When the marketshare is so low I suppose thats possible, would be interesting to se how Satya Nadella deal with the situation.

[baron99]

Apps on the WP is a desperation move by microsoft, ...if they do it ...and you can see how much access to more apps has helped Blackberry. It won't matter because the statistics say NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE! ...that won't change.

[cinder]

Phone cost veri important fie me. It is why I bought a USED iPhone. It is important to everyone I know, so I don't understand it not being shown as a critical factor. Maybe that are just polling those that use contract phone where price does not matter. sizecis

[notzed]

I'm surprised it's taken so long for things like battery life and physical robustness (water/shock proofing) to become primary selection factors. I'd add sunlight readable myself although that's clearly niche in terms of market (none are regardless of their backlight since they're too shiny).

Although big screens are desirable to many there should still be a sizeable market for phones small enough to fit in a trouser pocket? Women have shoulder bags but unless blokes start carrying man-bags around those of us that live in warmer climes have nowhere to put those obesely overweight phones most of the time.

[chithanh]

Not surprising but pretty sad that "security" did not rank among the top reasons. People want their phone to just work™, whether someone can read their private information or steal their online/banking credentials only matters after it has happened.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/02/everyone_wants_.html