Market research firm Interpret recently made some discoveries about public perception of smartphones that should shock, surprise, and amaze you. The just released report, dubbed "Signature Smartphones: Gaining Mindshare in Order to Gain Market Share," reveals that despite being massively disadvantaged in the marketplace, Palm managed to nab a huge chunk of mindshare with the Pre -- in fact, the report suggests that the Pre is number two only to the iPhone 3GS in the metric. The study looks at the driving factors behind purchaser's decisions to buy a smartphone, narrowing down the list to three major components: belief that the phone is "smart," belief that the phone is "hip / cool," and belief that the phone will make them more productive. Rating a swath of phones (BlackBerry Curve and Storm, G1, iPhone), the report found that only the iPhone and Pre balanced the three factors in a way in which consumers felt the higher price tags were warranted. More to the point, only the Pre and the iPhone 3GS managed to strike that balance at all; offerings such as the two BlackBerrys were lopsided. There's not much more meat to the study, though it does shed some interesting light on just how Palm managed to squeeze its way back into the limelight (of course, it doesn't hurt to have a product that's actually kind of cool). Check out the whole PDF for yourself over at that read link.
Disclosure: Engadget columnist Michael Gartenberg is an employee of Interpret, and worked on the study cited above.
posted September 24th 2009 8:48AM
belief that the phone is "smart"? What?
That is exactly what I was thinking. Seems like a stupid category to me.
Who paid for the report?
>>>> "...our clients’ business objectives..."
http://interpretllc.com/custom-research.php
The study was only concerning "image" of the device. It has nothing to do with capabilities, apps or really anything technical.
Basically, is the device cool and hip. It shows a lot about Pre to already be up there.
To follow the herd: if you want a smart and productive phone, buy a BlackBerry; if you want a hip/cool phone, buy an iPhone.
and if you wanna be productive and cool, get a Pre!
funny how people with iphone drooled when i showed how the pre can handle voice, email, web, and games all simultaneously by flicking back n forth
^^^^Overrated.
When it comes to the iPhone I'll be glad but that doesn't mean I'll be frothing at the mouth until then. My iPhone does all I need it to do right now and it does it extremely well.
@ darkstar:
1) iPhone can handle calls and web/email/games simultaneously. No problem at all.
2) I thought the Pre can't use voice and data simultaneously on the Sprint network?
The phones are smart, but the users are stupid. Except for iPhone users. Hehe. We bad, we hip, we cool.
on sprint network, voice with data on wifi is fine. cant do voice and data on evdo.
"and if you wanna be productive and cool, get a Pre!
funny how people with iphone drooled when i showed how the pre can handle voice, email, web, and games all simultaneously by flicking back n forth"
But I bet your Pre can't fart!
"But I bet your Pre can't fart!"
A real man can out fart his phone any day of the week.
Yeah. Belief that the phone is smart. Belief that the phone is hip and cool. Belief that the phone is productive. You can pay $10,000 for twelve more of these "Interpret" reports if you'd like, as well...
I was fascinated to see that the BlackBerry Storm performed almost identically to the Palm Pre in their polling "research." It actually scored two points higher than the Pre on their "cool" factor poll. That's probably good for the Storm, but not so great for the Pre.
Coincidentally, their "sweet point" on price seemed to be pretty arbitrary... The G1 Android phone from T-Mobile was within about ten bucks of the Pre in their "research," and the Pre was within about ten bucks of the iPhone 3GS. But only the Pre and the iPhone 3GS were priced right, according to their analysis...
Meanwhile, apparently customers are willing to pay above $100 more for the Storm than what Verizon is currently selling it for, which would seem to be a good strategy to clear out the warehouse. Coincidentally, the out of pocket price for a Palm Pre is about $75 *more* than customers are apparently willing to pay for the device.
There's your trouble, Palm.
I don't necessarily doubt their research, but their analysis and conclusions seem quite blatantly disconnected from that research. As was pointed out above, it makes you wonder who their "clients" are...
@KarlW
It does seem vague, but "interpret" didn't create the categories.
The three smartphone descriptors used in the report - Smart (Intelligent/Adept), Cool (Hip/Trendy), and Productive (Efficient/Organized) - are themselves the product of earlier market research regarding "intenders" (survey participants indicating that they intend to purchase a smartphone): "What about the phone? What are the top feelings that come to mind?" (Source: Interpret MobileTrax, pg 3).
For what it's worth, I've never been a fanboy for any particular platform - just the right tool for the job at the time. I own many Apple products, and will continue to purchase more in the future. And I'm loving my new Palm Pre... it's nice to see a once innovative company pull itself back from the brink (as - we would do well to remember - Apple has done many times in the past).
Mindshare & Statistics:
Q. Do you know about the iPhone:
Person 1: Yes!
Person 2: Yep, got one myself
Person 3: Yes
Person 4: Yes
Person 5: Yes, have one
Person 6: Yes
Person 7: Yep
Person 8: Yes, I own one
Person 9: Yes
Person 10: Sure
Q. Do you know about the Pre?
Person 1: No
Person 2: No, is it a phone?
Person 3: No
Person 4: Yes
Person 5: No
Person 6: Nope
Person 7: Never heard of it
Person 8: No
Person 9: Yes I own one
Person 10: No
Q. Do you know about the Blackberry?
Person 1: You mean the fruit?
Person 2: Pretty tasty... do you mean the fruit?
Person 3: No
Person 4: No
Person 5: No
Person 6: Nope
Person 7: Um... no
Person 8: No
Person 9: Yes, my wife has one for work
Person 10: No
So that's 100% know about the iphone, 20% about the Pre, and 10% about the Blackberry:
"New study says Palm Pre second only to iPhone 3GS in mindshare"!!!!!
Wow your gay as F|_|CK darkstar.
If i had a higher paying job i'd be all over the Pre.
i know what u mean!
currently, company pays for my Palm Pre. heres hoping my next job will do the same! i found out not every company gives phone services for free :(
What do you mean you found out?
you idiot it's only 99bucks.
Pretty cool beans for the Palm Pre. I am glad to see it is making a name for itself.
1. There should have been a factor on 'highly effective creepy redhead in TV commercial' in the study. Obviously there wasn't such a factor in the study, making it clearly invalid.
2. Smart + phone = smartphone. See?
God the iPhone looks BORING!!! Apple really need to do something about that interface because it looks really tired.
It's old because its familiar and it works. Apple advertises the apps not the menu (and so does Palm). Mindshare doesn't translate into marketshare. RIM reports its earnings today which will show substantial growth. I'd take healthy share price over dubious mindshare any day (and so would Palm).
As the old saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"...
Motorola with the Razr is a great example of this oh wait...
@ Jim
Without mindshare there won't be any marketshare, so at the least it equals a high potential for market share. The iPhone, for example, had an extremely high mindshare, despite its lack of comparative features. This translated to a high marketshare one year later, and a very high marketshare two years later.
Without mindshare a product like this is dead in the water because no one will buy a product they don't consider worthwhile and high mindshare means the product is considered worthwhile.
It's very much like the interface that Moses got with the Ten Commandments from the guy who built the universe. Boring, but simple to understand and efficient to use.
Yeah, it looks horribly outdated and pales in comparison to most of the newer interfaces out there today.
Also, I'd argue that it's NOT efficient.
- Can't get all of your useful information on one page: I should be able to see things such as my upcoming tasks, appointments, weather info, or even previews of txt messages, missed calls, and emails on the front page without having to click on each icon to open up each app individually. That's inefficient
- Constant scrolling through pages of apps without the ability to better organize them or even put them into categories of your own choosing
- The lack of a task manager for multi-tasking or flipping back and forth between apps
And then the little things such as:
- the inability to customize anything if you don't jailbreak it first
- dull icon-set
- little to no animations (besides the left-right scrolling)
It looks dated basically, and isn't a very efficient home screen.
Here's what I consider an efficient home screen, that is also very elegant in its execution:
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/1573/200909211431190000111g.jpg
http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/5787/200909211431350001111g.jpg
As the old saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"...
Has nothing to do with that.
Apple has a real problem with their interface design, and that is they are terrified of making any radical changes.
Why?
Notice how many times you see an iPhone stuck into story after story? Picture after picture?
Eventually the grid-o-icons becomes so etched into people's heads, that anything that doesn't look like that, wont register as "iPhone" to the viewer. In short, that grid is as much as a ID mark as the Apple logo. If Apple alters that, they lose the brand image, and risks losing users, because a grid-o-icon-less iPhone, isnt the iPhone. Just like the iPod without the click-wheel, isnt an iPod.
Good branding for Apple, bad for the future as other companies can innovate and experiment with UI till their ears bleed, while Apple is stuck in 2007...for the foreseeable future.
All of the other things are academic, as other companies will get tons of apps, and many more features that Apple cant make exclusive to the iPhone.
So Apple is in a box, and they aren't going to cut a hole in it anytime soon, and they may be running out of time.
"So Apple is in a box, and they aren't going to cut a hole in it anytime soon, and they may be running out of time."
Since when has Apple been afraid to abandon its own old conventions? They're a trendsetter. They alienate legacy users all the time. But thanks anyway, you're quote is the funniest thing I've read all morning.
Apple is the dick in a box?
LOL....it's very cheap...
I'm a little surprised by this news, as much as I like Palm I wasn't expecting others to. I'll be getting a Pixi once it comes to O2 UK.
That's good news. The Pre is pretty awesome and they are working hard on the commercials to go after iPhone, so it better be working. The G1 and myTouch 3G are (1)not too cool looking and (2)not advertised as being capable of tons of "apps" and fighting the iPhone so I'm not surprised they're not making the cut here.
What?! The Peek is not even mentioned. I say this study is biased!
Oh, I forgot to fill out my bullshit bingo. Anyway, BINGO!
That PDF has no value whatsoever. That report has no value whatsoever.
And I'm not saying that it couldn't be right, just that it is just a pdf with couple of graphs and paragraphs how Apple, Palm and Blackberry ROCK! YEAH!
No statistics, no scientific evaluation (or even explanation of methods used), no nothing. Total and utter bullshit. Just a one showing how "media" nowadays is totally clueless and doesn't have any source criticism for corporate bullshit when the bullshit comes from sexy "market research firm" or from "market analysts". And usually these market research firms who don't publish their methods are just crappy wannabes and want to get their 15 mins of fame.
Pathetic.
Yup. Mindshare translates as 'looks nice but probably won't buy'.
The iPhone sells well because it's a good phone not because of an arbitrary and subjective metric like mindshare.
It's a summary report for publicity. If you'd like to pay the $10k for their subscription, I'm sure they could give you what you want.
Or would you rather just complain out of ignorance?
I agree. Utterly unscientific. I do love the way Endgadget's Pre-lovin' writers phrased the title:
"New study says Palm Pre second only to iPhone 3GS in mindshare" rather than "New study says iPhone 3GS is number 1 in mindshare" ...
@k
Aren't both titles technically correct? Just sayin
@K -- It's not notable that the iPhone would be number one in mindshare. What *is* notable, and the reason this article is even here, is that Palm somehow managed to make themselves seem almost as "cool" -- no small feat considering how awful the company was doing about 10 months ago.
> ...If you'd like to pay the $10k for their subscription, I'm sure they could give you what you want...
I asked up there near the top "Who paid for the report?".
This "report" doesn't read unbiased, IMHO.
Indeed, 10k? I wouldn't pay 10p on that sample. The language reads like it was paid for by Palm.
Also talking about meaningless rot like the 'mindspace' means nothing unless it also compares how many people who notices the Palm actually went out and got one.
But hey it's nice that engadget did their friend a favour and give him a free advert.
My only problems with the Pre is lack of 3rd party apps (which are coming) and it's just too small, screen-wise....
Beyond that, perhaps the physical design (form factor) could be improved, but I think Palm is heading atleast 90% into the right direction...
I believe they should seriously consider Pre's without hardware keyboards ASWELL, because if people are willing to buy as many iPhone's as they have with a touch-screen only, I think they can handle a Palm Pre/Pixie without one aswell... They just need to make the device/screen size a bit bigger...
I have no problem with the Pre, I could even *tolerate* the screen size but they're not built rock solid. Plenty of sliders are rock solid, like the N97. Pre is a wiggly, cheap feeling phone. I returned mine 2 days after launch, and a Sprint employee told me a lot of people were not thrilled with the build quality.
I assume that this study was focused solely on North America?
You can assume that this so called study wasn't really focused on anything part from producing shit. All real studies publish also these little facts like sampling, evaluation methods and all the other hundred little facts that make a study a study.
But yes, you can also assume that this study focused solely on NA. Probably also solely on Interpret's break room or their favorite sexy coffee shop on that sexy boulevard.
Of course. Nokia have by far the biggest mindshare globally.
The question is how well does mindshare effect market share. The vibe Rubinstein gave off on the Engadget Show made me think the Pre wasn't living up to either Palm's or Sprint's expectations.
What we should be wondering (or what they should have asked) is whether or not these people were commenting on the platform of the devices, or the device as a whole. If they're implying that these people think WebOS is second to iPhone OS, then Palm has something to smile about.