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:
Usability – 11.45% of all opinions expressed
Reliability – 9.45% of all opinions expressed
Price – 3.21% of all opinions expressed
Screen – 2.89% of all opinions expressed
Sound Quality – 2.52% of all opinions expressed
Compact Size – 2.10% of all opinions expressed
Screen Size – 1.70% of all opinions expressed
Battery Life – 1.63% of all opinions expressed
Customer Support – 1.40% of all opinions expressed
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 Cruztablet (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.
Amazon Kindle Fire – 3,572 customers
Apple iPad 2 – 999 customers
RIM Blackberry Playbook – 281 customers
HP TouchPad – 970 customers
Motorola Xoom – 588 customers
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:
Reliability – 14.76% of all opinions expressed
Usability – 7.23% of all opinions expressed
Battery Life – 6.42% of all opinions expressed
Display – 5.82% of all opinions expressed
Camera & Video – 4.91% of all opinions expressed
Reception/Call Quality – 2.57% of all opinions expressed
Customer Support – 2.27% of all opinions expressed
Keyboard – 2.27% of all opinions expressed
Design (style) – 1.57% of all opinions expressed
Price – 1.23% of all opinions expressed
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.
Apple iPhone 4S – 542 customers
Blackberry Torch 9800 – 550 customers
HTC Trophy – 236 customers
Nokia N8 – 523 customers
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.
We are proud to announce the a new release of Opinion Mining software is now available to our customers and registered users. The release includes the following functions, features and enhancements:
New format of Customer Intelligence analysis report along with short videos to help quick adoption
New pages on our website describing how our customers using Customer Feedback Analysis to outsell their competition.
New Trending report
I would like to thank our customers who provided valuable feedback that helped us develop these new capabilities.
We finally got enough customer feedback to see the evidence that iPhone 4S substantially improved customer experience compared to iPhone 4 models. Apple resolved antenna issues completely and as the result significantly improved reception/signal clarity. Customers love new keyboard experience and their usability satisfaction ratings are exceedingly high. The results are based on Opinion Mining of 4,489 Apple iPhone customers published online.
The image above highlights the attributes of customer’s experience most important to them as they have articulated in their feedback. No keywords were used during the analysis to identify these attributes, and no questions were asked to influence the answers, as surveys are not our business or part of our opinion mining methodology. Click on the image to enlarge it.
This is a new analysis of customer feedback, which is available online, about their smart phones. At this time we are tracking and analyzing comments from 37,110 customers on 136 mobile smart phones. I decided to filter out the phones which were not updated with new customer comments during the last 30 days to insure that these phones are still available on the market. The resulting Product Reputation report is available at Market Intelligence.
I selected the most reviewed phones for each operating system to take a close look at what attributes are important to the smart phone customers. As customers keep posting their reviews and forum comments about their experience with the phones they chose, Reliability remains the most important specific attribute that dominate the conversation as 15.22% of all opinions mined is focused on it.
Let’s face it, anybody who buys a smart phone and pays for the service expects to be able to use their phone every time they want to. Apple clearly outshines competition by exceeding customers’ expectations of Reliability by 10%. HTC-HD7 (Win7 OS “representative”) meets their customers’ expectations: however Android (HTC Thunderbolt), Symbian (NokiaN8) and RIM’s Blackberry Curve 9330 are a disappointment to customers who selected to purchase these phones.
Overall customers are satisfied with their decisions to various degrees, but Apple iPhone users are reporting that the phone exceeded their expectations by 42%. Not surprisingly they also are the most satisfied with the choice and quality of the Applications available to them, their Usability and Web Browsing Experience. Since I personally have never purchased an Apple product, nobody can accuse me in the Apple bias: however this phone has earned a remarkable reputation by managing not to disappoint its user in a single attribute of customer experience.
Nokia N8 leads customer satisfaction in Battery Life, exceeding expectations by 14%, Call Quality, Music Player experience, Sound and Video Quality. However, it also disappoints their customers where it really counts – poor Customer Support, inadequate Keyboard, Operating System experience and Web Browsing.
Below is the list of top 19 Customer Experience Attributes by their importance to the customers as they opined in their comments and reviews. Our methodology does not utilize surveys, focus groups, panels or other forms of leading questions/bias forming market research tools. I have filtered out any Attribute with importance below 0.35% that may be very valuable for Product Marketing analysis, but not very meaningful for general consumption. The complete list is available on request:
General Satisfaction (~CSI) – 16.96%
Reliability – 15.22%
Usability – 8.97%
Battery Life – 5.42%
Screen/Display experience – 4.44%
Call Quality – 3.78%
Customer Support – 3.39%
Style/Design – 3.19%
Picture Quality – 1.94%
Feature Set – 1.92
The selection of phones for the comparative analysis would vary based on criteria important to a person who conducts the research – I wanted to compare a single representative phone per operating system and you may want to find the best Android phone for example. The Attributes and their importance may vary based on such choice as customers “conversations” could yield substantially different results.
Last week, the announcement of Amazon Fire line of products created a sizable splash in social media, Consumer Electronics, business and IT publications. While this new device does not have specs of a tablet, most observers immediately started to pin it against iPad. Is it a fair comparison? The answer to this question depends on your definition of what a product is. If you define a product by its functions and features, the answer may be – No. However, if your understanding of a product agrees with Clay Christensen’s definition as the “jobs-to-be-done,” the iPad and Fire will most definitely compete for the same share of consumer wallet, as most customers of these devices use them for web browsing/entertainment most of the time.
Since the Amazon Fire is not yet shipping to the customers, I would like to offer a comparison between Amazon Kindle and Apple iPad 2 from the perspective of their customers. Online marketing research produced this analysis of 7,706 customers feedback published in social media.
The image above highlights the attributes of customer’s experience most important to them as they have articulated in their feedback. No keywords were used during the analysis to identify these attributes, and no questions were asked to influence the answers, as surveys are not our business or part of our opinion mining methodology.
You can click on this link to access the dynamic dashboard and verbatim (by clicking on a specific bar).
Given such a high perception of value users of relatively primitive but extremely functional Kindle give to their experience, the Fire is poised to make a sizable bite out of current iPad tablet growth prospects.
Category Management Report Tablet’ Brands Word of Mouth Assessment (July 1, 2011)
This information is based on analysis of 6,413 customer reviews published online on or before July 1, 2011 on popular websites like Amazon, Best Buy and Cnet.com.
Only customer’s generated content (Customer Word of Mouth) is analyzed. Consumers’ opinions, without ownership reference, are not part of this online marketing research. The customer generated content was located, authenticated, de-duped and aggregated for the analysis.
There is significant difference in volume of customer feedback available for online marketing research of various brands as illustrated on the chart below.
Changes in Customer perceptions over time
HP TouchPad Tablet was introduced just a few days ago with an enthusiastic number of reviews and remarkably high Customer Satisfaction score. However it is not appearing on the Trending charts above because there is no sufficient history yet to plot.
Trend – It appears that the tablets with proprietary operating systems outperform Android counterparts, in terms of Customer Satisfaction, as they come to the market. See the chart below.
Please follow the links to HP Touchdown, RIM PlayBook, and Motorola Xoom, verbatim if you want to read what the customers say about their experiences.
The discussions on importance of innovation are all over Social Media. The calls for innovating ourselves out from the current economic malaise are coming from the President of Consumer Electronics Association to the President of the United States. In the words of Louis XIV (or was it Mel Brooks?) – “It’s good to be the King!” – for the rest of us it would be helpful to put some definitions around these terms. I do not pretend to be an expert on the subject of innovation, but I like to be specific and want to offer some ideas for discussion.
So what differentiate commercially successful product or service from the innovation?
I would like to propose that successful products gain market traction, meet their sales forecasts and generate anticipated profit margins. Innovative products re-shape the market place, create new categories, and generate blockbusting profits. Innovative products successfully defeat the competitors’ assaults for long periods of time.
Development and introduction of successful products or services is a very challenging and risky endeavor, as we are well aware.
The Recent Portfolio Management Benchmark Survey sponsored by Planview, reported that only 52.3% of products meet with commercial success, while 21.2% were “killed prior to launch”. They did not specify the type of products or industries covered by this survey, but my personal experience pegs the success ratio well under 40% mark.
The risk level for innovation is even higher. It is estimated that only 1 out 3,000 new innovative ideas becomes a commercial success. We also know that most innovative products rarely have anything to do with technological inventions, but have everything to do with the scale of market adoption. Peter Dreker, the father of modern Management Science, wrote in his book “Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, that a 15 year “gestation” period is the average time observed between the time of an original invention and the time of its commercial realization.
We all know examples of such innovations as Ford T, Microsoft Word, iPod and iPad to name a few that dominated and still dominate their product categories. These are very different products, however the thought process, methods and techniques of the people who are behind the creation of these products, are a mystery we want to discover.
I would like to propose that the key difference between really good Product Managers and the Innovators is in a way they perceive and understand the markets they target.
While a Product Manager segments the markets in terms of demographics or personae for which they develop a product, an Innovator is focused on the Customer Experience of people, who struggle to use existing products to do their chores, and interprets these struggles into the definition of innovative vision for new generation products.
In other words they concentrate on improvement of EXPERIENCE as oppose to improvement of a PRODUCT.
Last week we focused at customers’ perception of Operating System for tablets they purchased. These metrics are extracted from 1,352 customer generated content pieces published on-line on or before June 15th, 2011 using Opinion Miner software.
The difference between customer expectations and their experience is measured from 0 to 2, where 1 represent a point of experience matches expectations and can be interpreted as 1=100% satisfaction.
The importance indicates a percentage of opinions about this Attribute weighted against the sum of all opinions expressed about the analized set of products. Considering the ratio of customer reviews published on-line against the number of units sold, any Attribute that carries importance over 1% may be experienced by tens of thousands of customers.
— CustomerSpeak! —
Android customers are also quite happy with their purchasing decisions depending on the version supplied with their tablet, while iOS do not have anything specific to say on the subject.
There is a heated debate in a Product Management community about the Role of Market Research in creation of innovative products and I have mused on this subject earlier on this blog.
Product managers, who subscribe to a “thought leadership” (as oppose to “customer participation”) model, love to quote Henry Ford who supposedly said – “If I asked my customers what they want, they simply would have said a faster horse.” The “customer driven innovation” camp proponents are swearing by Customer Feedback and Voice of Customer based methodologies. However there is no clear evidence that either site consistently out-innovate their opponents.
During this webinar we will explore and analyze traditional methods of product definition process, their limitations and their applications that often lead to incremental improvements as oppose to true innovation. We will talk about
What separate a successful product from INNOVATIVE product
What are differences between a Product Manager and a Star Product Manager , and
How the knowledge of the market helps to close the gaps between the two.
