Studies just released by RBC Capital and ChangeWave Research polled
iPhone 3GS and
Palm Pre owners on their respective levels of satisfaction with their devices -- then compared them. In the studies, 200 iPhone 3GS users and 40 Palm Pre owners were polled. Overall, 99 percent of owners of Apple's phone proclaimed themselves to be "satisfied," while 82 percent of that number declared they were "very satisfied." The poll of Pre owners showed that 87 percent are "satisfied," and 45 percent of those owners describe themselves as "very satisfied." Interestingly, the 42 percent of "very satisfied" customers are the highest score ever attained by a Palm device, and it's a number that's only ever been bested by RIM and Apple. When asked about their respective reasons for buying their devices, Palm Pre owners listed the touchscreen interface, ability to multitask, and ease of use in the top three, while iPhone users cite its touchscreen, ease of use and faster web browsing as its biggest draws. So what about drawbacks? iPhone users (a whopping 55 percent of them, in fact) say that AT&T's network is their main gripe with the device, while Pre owners list short battery life and lack of third party apps as the devices biggest drawbacks. All in all, a pretty good showing for both -- though the microscopic sample size (especially for the Palm Pre) makes us wonder about the validity of the findings a bit.
Read - Apple's iPhone 3GS has 99 percent satisfaction rate
Read - iPhone vs. Palm Pre: Satisfaction bakeoff
posted Aug 14th 2009 8:02PM
Forty people surveyed about the Pre? Wow, that's um... sad. Is that the best they could do? Really?
It probably would not sway the pre vote to 80%+ but the results wouldn't stink of FUD if 200 pre owners were polled along with 200 iphone users.
In statistics, 40 can be large enough sample as long as they are a quality sample. It takes a far smaller sample than one would think to give an accurate picture of public opinion.
Dodgy and stupid statistics are loved by lots of journalism, don't you know they think that Macs are going to take over Windows?
yeh, only 40 surveyers for pre ...
thats NOTHING .. honestly, even my classmates made surveys with more ppl and the teacher told them that with so few ppl the results wont be true ..
So basically 20 ppl(in the whole world) owning the Pre say that they are somewhat satisfied .. GOOD result ...
sry but this so makes me laughing and being angry at the same time since some readers will take this seriously
This is an example of how results are skewed. 87% of Palm Pre owners were satisfied, yet the graph paints the wrong picture… These folks seem to be iPhone loving reporters!
QuantumPhy(?)
I find it amazing how some owners of the iPhone are quite fanatical about their phone. Don’t you think it is sufficient to simply love your phone? I own a Palm Pre and I love my phone (but it is just a phone!). For me the Pre is AWESOME. If 87% of Palm Pre owners are satisfied with their phone, that is quite impressive. You don’t need to bash other people’s choices if they do not share your preference. Wake up, we are living in America -- we can all live in peace.
Pre's satisfaction rate pretty much validates the high return rate for Pre. Numerous people report Pre's cheap plastic keyboard become loose and the screen cracks easily.
@Thinker
Obviously you don't know how to read a bar graph. The 45/42 break down are for very satisfied or just satisfied. READ THE LABELS.
Engadget you made a typo in saying 42% were very satisfied, the story says 45%. I had to double check with the read link and the chart to be sure.
What a horrible survey, doesn't have "I want my money back, and I want my contract money back, too" option.
@Shinigami; there were other options but the graphs only show the people who were satisfied. 87% of Pre owners are satisfied and 99% (!) of iPhone users are satisfied. Those numbers are stunning in the cell phone market. People have traditionally hated their phones.
Well everyone does understand they could only find 40 people who were stupid enough to buy a Pre. "hi, i'm a pre and apple sucks.... what a minute why can't we bootleg your software"
Oh my Voyager doesn't work with the Zune software, and that is okay. But a Pre can't use itunes... its blasphemy.
It would be like trying to take a poll with Zune vs iPod. You would probably have to fly people from all over the country to get 5 people together who own a Zune, whereas I could walk down the street to get a list of people who own iPods.
@Novak no, 87% of Pre users are satisfied, which is a great number and doesn't indicate what you seem to think it does.
But this "study" is clearly junk. 40 polled people, thats a complete joke.
@Derrick
The Zune software is not meant to work with other devices than the Zune. There is another application for that and its called Windows media player. It works for a lot of devices.
Anyway, I don't use itunes or wmp, I prefer exile.
I also don't own a cellphone and I think 700$ per year to talk to people while I'm walking very expensive (60$ per month). I prefer to buy a bike once every 2 years and inline skates and food and wine for people I invite with my landline!
I'm impressed by the false needs people creates for themselves!
David,
I know how to read the graphs. I agree that the graph is correct, but I maintain that it is misleading. Why not show two graphs, one showing that 99% of the iPhone owners are satisfied with their phone and 87% of the Palm Pre owners are satisfied with their phone. Isn’t that how most satisfaction surveys are done? Check surveys done by PC Magazine, Consumers Report, and others. People (including me) move very quickly from page to page on the Internet, and when they see a graph about user satisfaction, they typically expect the graph in the familiar format. Why expect them to add up the numbers in their head: Number of satisfied Palm Pre owners = 45% + 42%. See the tone of some of the respondents to this article and you will see that many of them are misinterpreting the graph.
Sampling method is very very important too. It helps justify the significance and confidence of results and the sample size: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics)
I'd be curious about all this stuff, but this seems like a pretty off the cuff survey. In either case these are extremely high approval ratings for ANY piece of technology if they're anywhere near the actual percentages :\
Technically if only 40 Pre owners were polled, you can't have a percentage.
Here's my poll: 1 person was asked if they were very satisfied with the Palm Pre. They said yes, therefore 100% of Pre owners are very satisfied.
^ Oops, link should end with ")"
@cashmonee
our market research class suggested around 1000 to be able to correlate that to the whole population. 40 is way too low to generalize across the US
Shocking results - Apple owners are nearly 100% satisfied with their purchases. Who would have guessed the Kool-Aid drinkers would have been so devout.
highest ranked is back
A reader suggested another reason why the graph is misleading and incomplete. The graph should have included all three parameters:
(1) Very satisfied
(2) Somewhat satisfied
(3) Dissatisfied
Why leave out (3)? Leaving out 3 confuses the results. Such surveys should never be publicized if the author is suspected of tampering with the results or presenting the results in a misleading way. Surveys influence views and behaviors. A policy at Engadget should be that any customer survey must be reviewed and debated by senior staff before publishing. As noted previously, customer satisfaction surveys should always include a straightforward graph with the following parameters:
(1) Satisfied
(2) Dissatisfied
@thinker
They may have left it out for presentation reasons, to communicate a certain feel to it? Also, if you only had satisfied/dissatisfied you miss out on any granularity. There's a difference between someone who sort of likes something and someone who REALLY likes something that might be useful to know. Especially if you're doing correlations between other answers.
Oh yes.
This RBC/IQ survey is undertaken by RBC Capital Markets an international corporate and investment bank. Which kind of bankers got us into this current financial disaster?
200 respondents is not even close to being a valid sample, much less 40 for the Pre. How did they pick these estatic souls and were they savvy phone users or newbees. How long have they had their phone? Have they tried or had other newer phones demoed to them? Where they given the phones gratis? Need I mentioned that this “survey company” is in it to make money. This is pure PR Applesauce rubish.
Just remember, in Japan, carriers have to give iPhones away. That's the only way their customers will accept them. There many better phones in the rest of the world that those lucky people in the far East can use, so they don't need the lousy iPhone. The reason we don't see many of those great phones is because our networks, for the most part are crap. From all indications, they will widely implement WiMax/4G before we do. VOIP is widely used, and they still have a local branded network to use as needed. And since its not an iPhone, your web browser doesn't crash, google maps doesn't shut itself off in the middle a search, flash is supported, earbuds don't fall apart, your screen doesn't develope black lines, it doesn’t burn up, or worse and you can actually hear someone on your phone, in a crowded room.
Fortunately, with a bit of looking, you can find some of these 3g/4g capable phone so you don't have to put yourself in the position of signing up for another iPhone every time Apple says new! New and Improved what? Oh, you finally caught up with what the rest of the world is doing? Almost, comes back the reply from Appleland.
It would be helpfull to know who these organizations are and what business they are in at the beginning of the article.
When you consider that fact that around 1.5 million Palm Pres have been sold, you can easily counter that a sample size is not large enough to give an accurate representation of Pre customers without significant variance. I highly doubt that much effort was given to select a sample set of diverse geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Not to mention that there is no mention of the predisposing psychological factors involved with such purchases. Just as many who purchased plasma televisions would have been more satisfied with them than HD CRT owners even though the CRTs delivered better picture and did not suffer from the myriad problems that plasmas did, so do iPhone owners. They are much less likely to be critical of their purchase because of the emotional investment in them as well as the fact that many of them are not technically inclined and would not be able to identify the device's shortcomings. And now for your rebuttal....or I guess you could just flame me.
Badison,
I understand your point, but unfortunately, the facts show that the authors are not communicating the feel, they are influencing the feel; and that is unconscionable. I agree with you that the feel could be an important component of a survey. They could have maintained the “feel” by including (as stated above) not only the “Very Satisfied” and “Somewhat Satisfied” parameters, but also the “Dissatisfied” parameter in order for the graph to be both scientifically accurate and insightful (to convey the feel). If you go to the author’s website, they included a lot of graphs, yet they omitted the most standard graph for customer satisfaction, which is “satisfied” or “dissatisfied”.
Why such graphs should never be used:
Analyzing the implications of the graph, what if the survey showed that 90% of the iPhone customers were “dissatisfied”, and only 10% were satisfied. But of the 10% of satisfied customers, 90% were “Very Satisfied and 10% were “Somewhat Satisfied”. Now imagine if you happened to come across the Engadget website and you saw the following graph for satisfied iPhone customer (but they omitted from the graph the fact that 90% of the iPhone customers are dissatisfied) – imagine what your perception would be (see below).
(1) 90% Very Satisfied
(2) 10% Somewhat Satisfied
This is an example of how, if these types of graphs are sanctioned, sophisticated thinkers could deceive the public. It shows how by simply removing a single parameter (i.e. “dissatisfied customers”) from the graph, the results of the survey could be grossly distorted, consequently resulting in consumers being influenced to prefer one product over another product. This is how economic warfare is waged.
David
Why the graph is wrong:
Upon further analysis, I am reversing my earlier response to you (that I made above) that the graph is correct but misleading. The graph is both wrong and misleading. Here are my reasons. This graph is plotted on a basis of 100% (which should be, “Very Satisfied” + “Satisfied” + “Dissatisfied” = 100); this is high school math - yet the authors omitted “Dissatisfied” from the graph. Look at the graph and you will notice the Y axis goes from 0% to 100%. Now add up the tabulated data for the Palm Pre (45% + 42% = 87%) and any statistician will want to know why the remaining 13% (that is, 100% - 87% = 13%) of data is thrown away – this is where the error exists! How can the authors plot a graph from 0% to 100% and only include 87% of the data? They should have included 100% of the data. Also, looking at the Palm Pre graph, why did the authors omit the label for the X axis which should read “Very Satisfied” and “Somewhat Satisfied” (to be consistent with the iPhone’s graph); was this an oversight, or deliberate? Only the authors can answer this question.
!!! Its about the software Stupid !!!
It just works.
As an iPhone owner I'd say a lot of this has to do with the generation number of the phone and the number of apps out for it. I'm guessing in a year or two the Pre will be neck and neck.
You forget that the iPhone has enjoyed very high satisfaction since the first generation. What Palm has done is rather remarkable, but clearly still cannot touch the success of even the first iPhone, let alone the current.
Haven't smart phone expectations risen since the introduction of the original iphone? The general consumer that rated the 1st generation iphone is significantly different then the consumer that has rated the 3gs and pre.
Being a Pre owner I have to agree with most of what was said on the poll. While the Pre is nice and I would never trade it for an iPhone, it is horrible in battery life as I have to charge it two to three times a day on normal usage (Palm: solar power please). As for the apps, I am patient as i know Rome wasn't built in a day and working on Pre apps of my own I know it takes some work.
Would I buy another Pre device, hell yeah, do I think it is better then the iPhone? In some areas yes and in others no.
You forget that Apple has installed devices that will cause the iPhone to self destruct if the owner claims any dissatisfaction.
Seriously though, there's a psychological term, "cognitive dissonance" that may help in understanding this survey. The first iPhone cost $600 for the 8GB version (the 4GB had so many memory problems it was near unusable). Someone paying that much for a phone, especially a phone touted as the flagship smartphone of the year, is going to have very very high expectations. Cognitive dissonance theory states that to avoid harm (the idea that you got ripped off by Apple), iPhone owners will convince themselves that they are both happy with their iPhones and all of its features. Cognitive dissonance also explains the existence of the Apple fanboy.
If we look at the Pre, on the other hand, it costs $200, and is simply the latest in a long line of smartphones from Palm. Sure, it was hyped some, and it does contain some nice features, but relative to the iPhone's price and expectations, its on a much lower rung. That said, cognitive dissonance doesn't come into play with the Pre, and therefore owners are more likely to give legitimate opinions and reviews about the phone.
So, I said all that to say this. Psychological factors must be taken into account when comparing iPhone satisfaction with other phones, and taking that into account, this survey is both invalid as well as not nearly large enough to be representative. A good survey wouldn't ask the question about satisfaction so directly, rather it would ask more specific questions about different elements of the phones to get straight unbiased answers that would give insight to overall satisfaction.
@ Brad:
In order for your assertion to be true, Apple products would have to cost significantly more than their competitors, which they usually don't over the life of the product. I paid $400 for my 8GB iPhone, but after upgrading to a 3GS, I sold it for $125, which brings the total cost of ownership down to $275. I initially paid $3,300 for a Quad G5 and sold it for $1,100 a few months ago, making the total cost of ownership for that high-end (at the time) machine just $2,200.
Yes, Apple products may require a higher initial investment, but if you take care of them and time your upgrades well, you can make back a decent percentage in the resale market. Though I'm sure you're right about some people, you can't dismiss every satisfied Apple customer as suffering from cognitive dissonance.
and what about the people who bought a $600 iphone that didnt even have a 3g radio in it ... how much did they sell those back for?
Well, I got the $600 iPhone 1st gen... then I got a $100 gift card... then I sold it for $250 cash. So it cost me about $250.
@ Brad. Your psych is good but your clever use of incomplete figures is sad; but perhaps I still want to give u points for the most brainiac flame in a long time.
Your ommison of the Pre 8gig for $299 in store vs iPhone 8gig for $99 in store sure helped your angle but one imagines those Pre owners needing your well described delusional state to prop up their decision as least as much as an iPhone2G early adopter.
Anyway, just for comic effect I suspect all 40 Pre owners live on engadget, like vultures waiting for iPhone articles to attack so as to keep their desperation/satisfaction afloat.
LOL, I've always liked Palm and maybe oneday I get to see a Pre, thankfully though not on it's current 2mbit piss poor network that can't multitask voice and data.
Yawn, someone learned to page refresh so they can press the rank button multiple times, how clever.
Brad it would seem had a tantrum.
The somewhat satisfied iPhone customers probably didn't jailbreak.
SO TRUE
The sample sizes is definitely too small in particular for the Pre. I mean, I guess they worked with what they had but 40 people? C'mon.
40 palm pre owners? Please.
How about brand loyalty? I know more people would take a bullet for Steve Jobs than Jon Rubistein.
I was shocked that one of the options for "why did you purchase?" wasn't brand name recognition or something similar. I'm guessing a goodly percent of both surveyed groups would have lumped that up fairly high - I know several mac zealots (and in this case, that's an accurate term) who bought an iPhone simply because it was an Apple product.
It's true. Part of buying an Apple product is telling everyone how great it is. Overselling the strengths and justifying the weaknesses.
Irrelevant, and probably will work against Pre-fanboys anyway. Because, while there are Apple-fanboys that will defend Apple regardless of what, because of the hype of iPhones (as well as iPods), the user base actually consists of a large proportion of the non-brand-loyal, finicky joe-schmoes that will dump the platform in an instant were something better to arrive on the scene (remember all those Razr users who are..well, no longer Razr users).
In contrast, and I hate to say this as a former Palm OS user myself, a big chunk of the current Pre user base consists of Palm fanboys. The fact that you have a lot of them saying they are only "somewhat" satisfied of the Pre is not a terribly good sign for Palm.
In that sense, like several people have said, a better comparison would've been between current Pre satisfaction rates vs. 1st gen iPhone satisfaction rates; which, as has been shown, still favors Apple/iPhone.
I'm surprised they were able to poll every Pre owner in the world.
ZING!
yea really small sample, but I have to agree the Pre is a overhyped piece of junk.It feels like a toy phone. Palm hasn't been relevant in about 10 years
I commented months ago about how pre will be a huge fail
"I commented months ago about the Pre wil be a huge fail"
...Are you mentioning that to prove you were totally wrong? All I hear when people see my Pre is how badly they want Verizon to pick it up. Not to mention the President of Verizon wants it. Also considering Verizon's customer base vs. Sprint's, I'm thinking once it heads over there the apps for the Pre will skyrocket.
Sure it has a few bugs, but the iPhone didn't start out w/ copy/paste! Give them some time to gather info on what customers are saying and release some updates.
In conclusion, get off the Pre's balls.
Was this even worth posting? A total of 240 people surveyed, 40 with the Pre and 200 with the Iphone.
These charts are useless.