J.D. Power and Associates, the US based consumer research firm, has released a “consumer satisfaction” study which analyzes how consumers feel about their mobile phones.

Consumers rated Apple‘s iPhone as the top smartphone, and LG as the top traditional mobile phone.

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The study measure customer satisfaction with mobile handsets across several key factors. In order of importance, key factors for traditional handsets are:

• operation (30%)
• physical design (30%)
• features (20%), and
• battery function (20%).

Among residential smartphone owners, key factors are:

• ease of operation (30%)
• operating system (22%)
• features (21%)
• physical design (18%), and
• battery function (9.li>

Overall, Apple ranks highest among smartphone manufacturers with a score of 791 on a 1,000-point scale, performing particularly well in ease of operation, operating system, features and physical design. LG (772) and Samsung (759) follow Apple in the rankings.

Among traditional handsets, LG ranks highest in overall wireless customer satisfaction with a score of 733, performing well across all factors. Sony Ericsson follows with 712.

Some other interesting facts were revealed in this study:

• Smartphone users report sending and receiving an average of 17 e-mails per day on their phone.
• 82 percent of smartphone owners report regularly using their phone’s personal information management (PIM) capabilities—such as address books and to-do lists.
• Traditional phones are significantly cheaper, costing on average $111 less for the intial purchase and $28 per month less for the service plan.
• More than 40 percent of smartphone users report entirely replacing landline calling with mobile phone calling, while only 28 percent of traditional handset owners have done the same.

Here is the full list of the handset ratings:

27.05.2009    Tags: iPhone, Market-Resources, smartphones