Find Out Which Brands and Products were the Biggest Winners in Barcelona
Argus Insights has been monitoring social conversations at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Before MWC, we hosted a webinar highlighting the brands and products that drove the most mindshare heading into the showcase, for which the slides and presentation are now available to download. Simply fill out the form and we’ll send that your way immediately.
Now that the event has passed, find out which brands, products, and tech trends were sparking interest during MWC. Argus Insights would also like to offer a free Post MWC 2015 Report (usually valued at $3,000) as a gift. The stories that we are finding are just too good that we believe everyone can benefit from the data. The world is talking and we’re listening, take advantage of our comprehensive analysis:
Discover what topics are most important to consumers
Examine market trends and consumer preferences
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The smartphone market seems to have paused in anticipation for Apple’s iPhone 6 launch. As has been the trend before with big Apple launches, consumers took a breath while awaiting what Apple had in store.
The chart below maps consumer mindshare across different major brands in the smartphone market. It is clear that mindshare overall dropped about a week before Apple’s new product launch on September 9th. While at first glance this trend could appear to indicate a lack of interest in smartphones, it actually demonstrates how consumers are willing to drop everything to wait for Apple’s new toys. While this is beneficial for Apple, it is not for Samsung who suffered a steep drop in mindshare, and Motorola, and LG which remained mostly stagnant after Apple merely announced their announcement of new products.
While other brands experienced a steady decline before Apple’s announcement, Apple saw a slight increase in the weeks leading up to it. This increase was caused by retailers lowering the price on old iPhone models to clear the shelves before news of the iPhone 6 broke. If the retailers did get people to upgrade to 5S iPhones with promotions just weeks ago, Apple will have a few disgruntled customers to deal with. Verizon and other retailers are already offering promotions to encourage people to upgrade to the iPhone 6, because that is crucial for the new Apple Pay system to thrive. With the sale of almost 4 million iPhone 6s in pre-sale, it appears as if Apple has once again shaken the market awake after sending it into anticipatory hibernation.
Argus Insightswill continue to investigate the effects of the iPhone 6 on the smartphone market, sign up today to receive reports on a regular basis.
Though it hasn’t been the main thrust of our business at Argus Insights, every quarter we round up our mobile data to see who is winning the battle for hearts, minds and wallets. Since we use public data mined by listening to consumers themselves, we’re able to judge the quarter almost immediately after it closes. These metrics have been successful in beating Wall Street estimates for both iPhone and Samsung smartphone demand almost every quarter for the last two years.
When searching for a smartphone with the best battery life, there are countless blogs, articles, and reviews out there that provide the top smartphones on the market. If there were 20 lists online giving the best smartphones for battery life, there would be 20 different lists of smartphones. Battery life test tend to be stress based, how long running Netflix or playing Spotify, but typically are not reflective of actual consumer usage. It all varies differently from methods of testing, style of survey that’s conducted, or how the hours are being measured. At Argus, we don’t have a methodology for testing, nor do we conduct vague test procedures, what we do is listen to the consumers. After all, consumers drive market success, not experts. In the end, user experience determines what products get sold in the market. Below are the top ten smartphones for long lasting battery life as determined by you, the consumers.
The graph above shows that, for example, the BlackBerry Z30 has close to 30% of its consumers expressing delight with only a minor percentage expressing negative opinions when it comes to battery life. The Nokia Lumia Icon had the fewest complaints among their consumers in regards to their smartphones having enough juice to go the distance. In terms of overall net sentiment in our consumer data, we quote the Energizer Bunny that these phones will “keep going, and going, and going…”
To address the elephant in the room, or maybe the lack, Apple and Samsung are not on this list. The top two companies that dominate the smartphone market and sell more than all their competitors combined fall short according to consumer data. Apple and Samsung for all their strength and glory, like Achilles, has a short life span when it comes to perceived battery performance.
What’s also interesting to point out is that half the products on the list are non flagship phones. Flagship phones don’t always rank high when it comes to battery life due to the power that flagship phones require (with the exception of the Z30). Many components within the smartphone also play a factor to the longevity of the device. Within any brand, the strongest/fastest processor, highest storage, best screen resolution, loudest speakers, and best camera quality are found in the flagships and those components place a heavy stress on the battery. This post is purely focused on battery life and we viewed phones that drove the highest sentiment, buzz, and what made consumers most happy.
In the future we will be analyzing other aspects of smartphone usage. Let us know what other features or uses you’d like us to share insights on. Below are details from consumers, sharing their love and hates of smartphone usage in their own words.
1) BlackBerry Z30 5″ Super AMOLED Display, Qualcomm Snapdragon, with a 2,880 mAh battery “Easily last moderate users 12 to 15 hours of use, heavy users will still get an all day experience” “On weekends with a little lighter usage, I can get through two days on one full charge” “The battery life is just as good if not better than the LG G2″
2) Motorola Droid Maxx 5” Super AMOLED Display, Qualcomm Snapdragon, with a 3,500 mAh battery “If you are looking for a work horse phone with a battery to get through the day, look no further” “The battery life is the best, I don’t have to worry about where my charger is all day using it all day as a GPS from 6am to 6pm the battery only used 25% which is awesome in my book” “The battery lasts all day from the time I get up until I go to bed the lowest I’ve had is 20%, charges really fast also”
3) LG G Flex 6″ Curved P-OLED Display, Qualcomm Snapdragon, with a 3,500 mAh battery “The first feature which jumped out to me was the excellent battery life” “They can’t compare to it when it comes to battery” “This thing easily outlasts my friends that have iPhones, even those with a bulky add-on battery case”
4) Nokia Lumia Icon 5″ AMOLED Full HD Display, Qualcomm Snapdragon, with a 2,420 mAh battery “So far I can get away with charging my phone every other day” “The battery life seems infinite” “The battery life is quite good, I would say it’s better than my HTC in that regards”
5) HTC One Max 5.9″ Super LCD Full HD Display, Qualcomm Snapdragon, with a 3,300 mAh battery “With the Max I’m not worried about rushing home to find a charger towards the end of the night” “Battery life is exceptional” “With the One Max, I have successfully left it off the charger for 15 hours”
6) ZTE Max 5.7″ IPS Display, Qualcomm Snapdragon, with a 3,200 mAh battery “Battery life is awesome I simply love this phone” “It has awesome battery life, I used to have to bring my charger to work with me with my ZTE Warp Sequence” “The battery lasts almost 2 days before recharge”
7) Google Nexus 5 5″ IPS Full HD Display, Qualcomm Snapdragon, with a 2,300 mAh battery “The battery life is a lot better than my last phone” “Battery life is pretty standard” “It charges fast too”
8) LG G2 5.2″ IPS Full HD Display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 800, with a 3,000 mAh battery “The features of the phone are excellent, the battery life is the best ive ever had” “Outstanding battery charge length as well as a very quick charge up” “The battery has been superb, especially as much as I use my phone”
9) Sony Xperia Z1s 5″ LCD Full HD Display, Qualcomm Snapdragon, with a 3,000 mAh battery “With moderate to heavy use I get almost 16 hours of battery life” “The battery is amazing for a screen this big” “Great battery, especially with that Stamina mode”
10) Motorola Moto X 4.7″ Display, Qualcomm Snapdragon, with a 2,200 mAh battery “The battery life is fabulous” “I get on average 13-17hrs of battery life on mildly heavy use “lots of web browsing” “Battery life is surprisingly good and an android”
For the company formerly known as RIM, Friday was a tough day because of revelations that fewer than half of the handsets sold were BB10 handsets according to BlackBerry pleads for patience after brutal quarter | Mobile – CNET News. While CNet puts blame on the launch of the Q10 after the Z10, our analysis finds that the issue isn’t the launch order of the new products but consumer concerns with the Q10 in specific.
Slowing demand for Z10 and initially poor consumer response to Q10 drive slow sales of BB10 devices for BlackBerry’s most recent quarter.
As you can see in the comparisons to the Apple iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S4, BlackBerry’s new handsets are experiencing slack demand. The initial delight around the Z10 has stabilized above the iPhone 5, showing that the early adopters of BB10 are delighted by the innovations embedded in the interface. The Q10, by contrast, has had a rougher start with few consumers even bothering to share their views, a key indicator of poor demand though recently it has gained in both delight and buzz. Overall, our results tell the story that the market is viewing BlackBerry as two companies, the stalwart producer of email focused, QWERTY enabled handsets and an upstart entrant into the smartphone market that has to play by the same rules of any new brand entering a market. The issue is the upstart has not yet sparked the frenzy BlackBerry or Wall Street needs or expects.
We will be digging into the differences in user expectations for the Q10 and the Z10 in this week’s Smartphone Consumer Demand Report. You can sign up to receive the report here and get weekly updates on what is driving Smartphones while your competition is still waiting for their quarterly report to download…
