This analysis is based on 30,670 customer reviews of 108 tablets published online by December 24th 2011.

To insure statistical representation and accuracy of results, we have focused on 18 tablets that were reviewed at least 100 times this year. That may mean that some tablets that were introduced toward the end of the year did not qualify for this report.

We have studied before the correlation between number of reviews published online and a number of units shipped, and therefore found it important to use it for comparison.

The most customer-reviewed tablet of 2011 are Amazon Kindle Fire (3,572), Apple iPad 1 and 2 (2,302 combined) and HP TouchPad (970).

Amazon Kindle Fire announcement dominated media and not surprisingly received a disproportional number of customer feedback after it was released.  It’s value proposition and content availability are highly anticipated to make long expected dent in iPad market supremacy. The number of reviews seem to predict that this is the case.

Even though Kindle Fire OS is build on the Android platform, it has sufficient proprietary layer to view it separately from a more common versions.

From the date of TouchPad introduction the WebOS customers were the most satisfied lot (1.39) and the uncertainty about its future does not seem to extinguish their enthusiasm. Apple iPad customers are very close behind at (1.35). It is interesting to note that iPad 2 version of iOS have substantially improved its overall average satisfaction score.

The Kindle Fire OS experience score falls 0.03 points behind the Android, which is well within the margin of error, while both somewhat exceeded their customers’ expectations.

Our Market Intelligence Analysis of the tablet segment indicates that the following attributes of customer experience are most important to them:

1. Usability – 11.45% of all opinions expressed
2. Reliability – 9.45% of all opinions expressed
3. Price – 3.21% of all opinions expressed
4. Screen – 2.89% of all opinions expressed
5. Sound Quality – 2.52% of all opinions expressed
6. Compact Size – 2.10% of all opinions expressed
7. Screen Size – 1.70% of all opinions expressed
8. Battery Life – 1.63% of all opinions expressed
9. Customer Support – 1.40% of all opinions expressed
10. Operating System – 0.95% of all opinions expressed

You can get more detailed explanation of Attributes and Importance by watching this short video.

In terms of overall satisfaction, Samsung Galaxy tablet (7″) has earned the top customer satisfaction rating (1.53) and Huawei Ideo 7 tablet (1.50) came within a statistical tie, while Archos 7 Home tablet (0.82) and Velocity Micro Cruz tablet (0.95) are on the very bottom of the list.

To get more specific insights into the dynamics of the tablet customer perceptions, we sampled a market segment by analyzing the most experienced (i.e., most reviewed) models representing different operating systems.

1. Amazon Kindle Fire – 3,572 customers
2. Apple iPad 2 – 999 customers
3. RIM Blackberry Playbook – 281 customers
4. HP TouchPad – 970 customers
5. Motorola Xoom – 588 customers
6. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 inch – 615 customers

More details and customer feedback verbatim are available via access to the dynamic dashboard for this segment on request. Watch this video for navigation tips.

This analysis is based on 82,620 customer reviews of 318 smart phones published online by December 15th 2011.

To insure statistical representation and accuracy of results, we have focused on 42 smart phones that were reviewed at least 100 times this year. That may mean that some phones that were introduced toward the end of the year did not qualify for this report.

We have studied before the correlation between number of reviews published online and a number of units shipped, and therefore found it important to use it for comparison.

The most customer-reviewed phones of 2011 are HTC Thunderbolt (5,579), Apple iPhone 4-16GB (4,106) and LG Ally (2,514).

HTC got a hold on the position of the most reviewed brand in the smart phones category largely based on popularity of the Thunderbolt.

The customer’s enthusiasm for Android smart phones and the availability of a large number of models from multiple brands produced very unbalanced distribution of  reviews (75%).  

However, the Android OS enthusiasm did not translate into customer satisfaction lead as Windows phone customers’ expectations were exceeded by their experience with a wider margin. One of the possible reasons is the relatively weaker support of Android by the developer’s community that translates into the availability of applications.

It appears that Nokia’s decision to migrate their phones to Window OS is a wise one considering Symbian satisfaction scores.

Our Market Intelligence Analysis of the smart phone segment indicates that the following Attributes of customer experience are most important to them:

1. Reliability – 14.76% of all opinions expressed
2. Usability – 7.23% of all opinions expressed
3. Battery Life – 6.42% of all opinions expressed
4. Display – 5.82% of all opinions expressed
5. Camera & Video – 4.91% of all opinions expressed
6. Reception/Call Quality – 2.57% of all opinions expressed
7. Customer Support – 2.27% of all opinions expressed
8. Keyboard – 2.27% of all opinions expressed
9. Design (style) – 1.57% of all opinions expressed
10. Price – 1.23% of all opinions expressed
11. Music Player – 1.00% of all opinions expressed

In terms of overall satisfaction, Blackberry Style 9670 has earned the top customer satisfaction rating (1.60) and HTC Rhyme (1.59) came within a statistical tie, while Motorola Citrus (0.72) and Droid 2 Global (0.82) are on the very bottom of the list.

To get more specific insights into the dynamics of the smart phone customer perceptions, we sampled a market segment by analyzing the most experienced (i.e., most reviewed) models representing different operating systems. We picked the models that are close to each other in a number of customer reports to make it more comparable.

1. Apple iPhone 4S – 542 customers
2. Blackberry Torch 9800 – 550 customers
3. HTC Trophy – 236 customers
4. Nokia N8 – 523 customers
5. Samsung Continuum Galaxy S – 444 customers

More details and customer feedback verbatim are available via access to the dynamic dashboard for this segment on request.

How come there often seems to be no direct connection between the things we choose to measure and the goals we are hoping to achieve? Here are a few examples:

• If a company management’s goal is a sustainable long-term growth, why do they measure their decisions based on IRR (Internal Rate of Return)? The metric is useful for measuring a transaction, but it can likely lead to an ultimate distraction of an enterprise vitality if applied to strategic decision making.

• If a Customer Service organization’s goal is Customer Satisfaction, why do we measure performance of the employees based on how quickly they complete a call with a customer? Driving down the cost of customer interaction is a meaningful operational metric, but there is no profitability if customers abandon your operation.

• If an ultimate goal for Product Marketing is demand generation, wouldn’t it be critical to measure why customers buy your product? “The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it is selling him,” as Peter Drucker said.

According to Clayton Christensen, a professor in Harvard Business School and brilliant scholar of Innovation, the root of this problem is the quality of education offered in our business schools. He makes a great point illustrating how wrong choice of key metrics leads to deconstruction of enterprises and entire industries. Clayton is famous for his efforts to re-focus marketing “a job customers hire products to do” as opposed to product’s specs.

As consumers, we all know that our experience with “products” depends on many factors that are not connected to or even correlated with its specifications, functions and features. Quite often customers are more influenced by how easy it is to deal with the supplier or how reliably a product performs, or how simply and consistently it delivers the outcome we require. Yet when we try to measure customer satisfaction, we ask them to score their opinions about characteristics of the product itself. I do appreciate the elegant simplicity of NPS (Net Promoter Score) methodology and its well-documented correlation with profitability, but what specific action can it suggest to a product manager whose product earns a low score?

Steve Blank, Silicon Valley entrepreneurial marketing genius and the author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany book, seconds Christensen’s opinion about the quality of our business schools and is working on the development of an alternative curriculum that is focused on customer development as opposed to financial engineering. Blank is preaching the importance of customer involvement into a product development that appears to be a no-brainer to me, but apparently is a relatively challenging concept to most marketing professionals according to Kristin Zhivago.

The choice of measurements we make has a dramatic influence on the probability of a startup success, according to Eric Ries—a creator of the Lean Startup movement—who has very interesting thoughts on creativity and innovation. Eric thinks that we prefer to use “vanity” metrics that make us feel good instead of helping us to make quality decisions.

So it appears that according to the experts, institutional indoctrination and lack of intellectual honesty are two major reasons for the gap between organizational goals and performance measurements that negatively affect our probability to succeed in business.

I would like to suggest that our compensation system methodology is the third leg of this proverbial stool. Since a majority of the workforce is not compensated for producing results aligned with a long term goals of organizations they work for, we instead end up measuring what is easy to measure and makes us look good.