Andre Yoskowitz
16 Mar 2012 13:05
J.D. Powers and Associates has released their latest smartphone satisfaction ratings, based on a survey of over 7000 smartphone owners.
The ratings work by combining key factors which are performance (35%); ease of operation (24%); features (21%); and physical design (20%).
1000 points is a perfect score, which no company received, but Apple unsurprisingly topped the list at 839. HTC followed close behind at 798 points, both beating out the industry average of 774.
Following the leaders were Samsung at 769 points, Motorola at 758 points, LG and RIM at 733 points and finally Nokia at 702 points. Palm actually rated lower, but it is hard to include the now dead company in the list.
Those surveyed were done so during July-December of last year so Nokia's new Windows Phone devices were not included, leaving just the aging Symbian machines as a judge. RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, has been in decline for years as one-time fanatics move away from the company to "brighter pastures" like Android and iOS.
The report notes that scores mainly dropped thanks to the introduction of widespread 4G. 4G phones normally have worse battery life than their 2G/3G counterparts thus dragging the average down.