Smart Home has significant growth opportunities in 2016. While consumers are losing interest in Tablets and Laptops, which saw big drops in both buzz and delight from March 2015- March 2016, Smart Home and Wearables are maturing both in user experience and demand. Though Smartphone buzz increased, the market saw growth slow significantly in recent months, with users expressing less satisfaction.
Chart of the Day: Wearables and Smart Home on the path to growth
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Smartphones make everything easier. A smartphone puts all your pictures, music, social media accounts, emails, and even credit cards right in the palm of your hand. With all this convenient digitalization, though, consumers do not discuss “payments” as much as other use cases. Based on over 75,000 smartphone consumer reviews collected from January 2016, consumers mention using a Smartphone for financial transactions in less than one percent of reviews. This small amount of discussion was led by buzz from Samsung Pay featured in Samsung’s newest models.
Chart of the Day: Consumers show limited interest in smartphone transactions, but Samsung Pay is in the lead
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Samsung’s new Galaxy S7 Edge is winning the hearts and minds of smartphone consumers. While both Samsung and Apple’s flagship phones are adored by consumers, the delight score for the S7 Edge surpassed that of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. Happy consumers at Sprint and TMobile are contributing greatly to the positive reception of Samsung’s new flagships. However, as delight is flourishing for the Galaxy S7 Edge, it is falling off for the S7 model.
Chart of the Day: Consumers are partial to Samsung’s Galaxy S7 Edge over iPhone 6S & 6S Plus
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Consumer demand for Apple’s anthology of products has increased year over year promising a positive Quarterly Earnings announcement next week on Tuesday, October 27. While Apple’s Q3 demand has grown about 40% year over year, this improvement has fallen greatly since the nearly 150% demand growth that corresponded with the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in September 2014. The recent 6S launch is shaping up to be nothing short of a success, but Apple is used to smartphone market conquests, and the 6S line is falling short(er than the iPhone 6). According to consumer demand trends across all of Apple’s hardware offerings, the company’s Q3 earnings will be positive due to increased demand across segments like Smartphones, Tablets, and Wearables, but, this growth will not be as extreme as past quarters with big handset launches, namely Q4 2014.
Apple Tablets and Smartphones both contribute enormously to Apple’s bottom line. Consumer demand patterns for these segments have been similar, with extreme year-to-year demand growth in Q4 slowly waning down to about 40% growth in Q3 2015. When Apple first released the 6S in September 2015, we predicted that this handset would begin the iPhone’s Farewell Tour, and now that the handset has launched, we see strong evidence of this prediction coming to fruition. While consumers have been slower to adopt the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, they are reporting extremely positive experiences, the lack of #bendgate and overall high quality of the new S models have resulted in higher delight ratings from launch than the 6 line, though this delight comes with significantly less demand. While Tablets and Smartphones continue to drive demand, Apple’s Streaming Devices saw a drop in year-to-year consumer demand to inhibit Apple’s growth, after a rise in Q2.
Apple clearly had a good Q3 2015, but they have done better. The iPhone 6S and 6S Plus launch was decent, but did not drive nearly as much interest as their last handset launch. While still positive, tablet growth is slowing as well. Apple dove into the wearables space with the Apple Watch, and is seeing buzz from happy users increase slowly but surely as availability improves. Overall, Apple’s growth is slowing, but the company continues to grow year over year, and please their users along the way.
Want to track shifts in demand as they happen? Our 20/20 Demand Scorecards project demand and track shifts in consumer buzz and delight for the 20 most popular smartphone brands and products each month. Also available for Wearables and Smart Home markets.
The fight for dominance in the Chinese smartphone market is more intense than ever. Chinese manufactures are selling feature packed phones for cheap prices, and as a result, winning the customers that were once flocking to Samsung.
PC World reported that Xiaomi secured 15.9 percent of the Chinese smartphone market while Huawei had 15.7, leaving Apple in third place from April to Jun, 2015. These market share reports left Samsung out of the top three vendors, despite their launch of the flagship Galaxy S6. As local vendors offer a variety of cheaper options the Chinese smartphone market is broadening as consumers explore their options, but which brands do Chinese consumers actually like?
Though PC World reported that Xiaomi “regained its position as China’s leading smartphone vendor” in terms of market share, looking to delight (as calculated by analysis of consumer reviews from a major Chinese carrier) it is clear that Chinese consumers favor handsets from other brands. Samsung smartphones are consistently delighting consumers, despite the brand’s decline in attention. Huawei and Lenovo follow Samsung as the most well liked brands, leaving Huawei in a most favorable position. Huawei reportedly secured 15.7 percent of the Chinese smartphone market share and is currently receiving some of the most positive feedback from their users.
As local brands expand their offerings of cheaper handsets in the Chinese smartphone market, Samsung is losing attention, but customers continue to be delighted by their high end phones. Huawei is the brand to watch, as they are gaining attention, profits, and delight with increasing popularity of their higher end devices.
