SYDNEY: Apple may have been the star smartphone vendor of 2014, but looks like Samsung did a better job at keeping its customers happy.
Samsung topped the list of mobile phone vendors in America in terms of customer satisfaction with an index of 81. Apple was not too far behind, scoring 79. This is the first time that Samsung beat Apple to become a company to report a higher customer satisfaction number. Apple was down by two points from last year, while Samsung scored five points more than what it did in 2013.
Apple launched the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus this year, which sported screen sizes considerably larger than its older phones. It also released the iOS 8 operating system, which was plagued with glaring problems during the early months of its launch. Soon after the launch of Apple’s latest operating system, users complained of connectivity issues, call drops and other usability niggles. Apple even had to roll back the buggy 8.0.1 update, which included call forwarding issues and freezing of the device when accessing visual voicemail and the keypad not appearing when trying to enter iCloud Keychain verification codes.
Samsung launched the feature-rich Galaxy S5 this year with a fingerprint scanner and a heart rate monitor – the two highlights of this phone. It was also built to be waterproof and dustproof. This was followed in the second half of the year by the Galaxy Note 4, which turned out to be impressive. After reports of Samsung recording its lowest profits in three years, this news of outshining Apple in a customer satisfaction index will hopefully end Samsung’s year on a happy note.
