Amazon’s Fire Phone lit into the hands of users late last week. As typical Amazon customers, early Fire users were not shy about sharing their views with others. But unlike Kindle Fire Tablet customers, Fire Phone users are not ablaze with desire for more of their new handsets. Bad fire puns aside, new users flamed Amazon with some of the lowest delight scores we’ve seen for a new phone launch this year.
In fact, when compared to the Kindle Fire Tablets, this is the lowest delight scores we’ve seen for Amazon.
What gives? Is the Fire Phone doomed to spark interest in smartphone consumers? The early data is not very promising. As we get more insights as to the why, of course we’ll share them here.
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.
I don’t know about you but my inbox has been awash with ads from Apple and others with first class tickets for a guilt trip if I don’t get my mom (or my wife) an iPaxly Fire tablet or Next S5 Dash 8 smartphone for Mother’s Day next weekend. The gadget blogs have all been discussing what is the best phablet to get for the mom that desperately needs more megapixels in their live and delivers more cores than Octomom! But this is for Mom. Do we want to trust the guidance for a gift to the person that brought us into this world to the manufacturers who seek to siphon off more of mom’s monthly income in the name of ARPU so that you’ll have to support her later in life? No! Do we listen intently to the same geeks that told us the iPhone was a toy and that vinyl was dead? No! We listen to the one that soothed our sore throats with love and honey, that kissed our skinned knees, that ensured us there are plenty of fish in the sea if we were patient. Mom, or in the case of Argus Insights, other moms.
We culled through the millions of mentions by tablet and smartphone owners to see for those that discussed mom, and determine which brands delivered an experience worthy of our maternal gratitude.
Within tablets there is little surprise that Apple comes out on top. What is surprising is that more iPad owners aren’t chatting about the awesome gift they got mom. Amazon hits the sweet spot for the balance between price and delight while, juggernaut Samsung lags just behind Apple. Across the board, those reviews that mention Mom were higher rated than the rest of the population, bolstering the notion that Mother Knows Best.
Smartphones tell a different story though with the same beginning with Apple still leading the pack, just barely but with the lowest mom mentions of all the brands. Moms tell us that they like Nokia Lumia handsets just as much as iPhones (Mom always did like a bargain). Oddly Samsung is beat out by Nokia, HTC, even BlackBerry, whose recent push on Enterprise Mobility might need to shift to Enterprise Moms instead!
While this has all been a bit tongue in cheek (because Mom taught me not to stick out my tongue), the results are based on actual consumers discussions of what tablets and smartphones they love. The same data we used to beat Wall Street on Apple last week is being used to help you think about what to get Mom this year. So do Mom a favor, get something that will make life easier rather than forcing more gigabytes down her proverbial throat the way she forced you to consumer castor oil as a child.
Although Samsung’s most recent quarter has investors concerned as to their growth prospects in smartphones, the recent launch of the Galaxy S5 portends a brighter future for Samsung and their suppliers, including Qualcomm and Synaptics. The S5 is the best launch Samsung has seen in over a year. Unlike the launch of the S4, which boosted demand for the S3 and iPhone 5, the S5 launch seems to have honestly grabbed consumer attention. Our traditional delight and buzz metrics show the S5 doing well across multiple US and Canadian Retailers, with an oddly rocky start at Best Buy. The new HTC One M8 is perceived as a better handset but the adoption has not been as high as Samsung for HTC’s new flagship. Both are impacting demand for Apple’s iPhone 5S as these new flagships prove to be competitive alternatives. Later this week we’ll look at why this is as we dive deep in to what consumers are loving (and hating) about these new handsets.
There have been a whole slew of earnings reports as consumer electronics companies report on their efforts to win hearts, minds, and wallets from consumers in 2013. Lenovo announced better than expected earnings and bold predictions for the future as they court investors with a blend of caution and temptation after two major acquisitions. Our analysis of their performance with North America consumers confirms what the market already knows, that Lenovo has significant untapped potential with consumers. The graph below shows their performance in line with Acer and well below the market gorillas of Apple and Samsung.
Question is, how will Asus fair when they announce earnings on 14 Feb 2013. Our assessment is that Asus will do better than expected given the strong showing over holiday. We realize that the US market is not the only one that matters to these global purveyors of consumer technology and believe a strong Holiday 2013 can only help. Increasingly Asus products have been successfully positioned as less expensive alternatives to Apple and Samsung products. This has been driving in part to increased demand for Asus convertibles over other 2-in-1 laptop/tablets and larger demand for Asus tablets over the holidays. As Asus, like Lenovo, seeks to bring their smartphones to the US market (maybe they should look at buying BlackBerry…) this will only add to their share of US wallets, if they can differentiate against the other players. ZTE and Samsung are already playing to win in the low price smartphone segment. With Asus moving in, there will be blood in the water and hopefully smiles on the faces of consumers.