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Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

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Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#71

Post by jrockway »

NineStarPoint wrote: post #27

So obviously 99% is impossibly high, but iPhones (and well made flagship phones in general) being some of the most popular things ever made wouldn’t be very surprising to me. People’s lives revolve around their phones. They’re probably people’s most used item after their bed. And for the most part they work really well. That 20% of people don’t like Thanksgiving and the Shawshank redemption isn’t surprising to me, an…

Yeah, I agree with that. The article asks:

> If Apple’s claims of 99% satisfaction were true, it would mean the iPhone 14 was not only the most popular mass market consumer product of all time, but it would also probably make it the most popular anything of all time.

Is it not the most popular mass market consumer product of all time? People spend their lives on their phone these days, and I've never heard anyone say anything about their iPhone. I have one and it's fine. I'm satisfied. I have end-to-end encrypted backups, the battery lasts long enough, the screen is nice to look at, etc. If I like some sort of tech product, it's probably hard to find people that don't.

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#72

Post by addisonl »

loeg wrote: post #58

The original title, "Apple claims 99% iPhone 14 satisfaction. Is that possible? (No). We investigate" (which this was submitted under originally) is less click-baity than the current version: "Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?"

These both seem the same to me as far as click bait goes…

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#73

Post by SllX »

FireBeyond wrote: post #51
asutekku wrote: post #7

They are using Google reviews as proxy for customer satisfaction. I really can't take rest of the article seriously after that, knowing anyone can leave a review at Google and there's no guarantee they own the phone. Sure, 99% satisfaction rate is pretty much impossible, but if all Apple asked was "are you satisfied with iPhone 14" with "yes" & "not at all" options and only surveyed iPhone 14 owners, I can easily see…

> I really can't take rest of the article seriously after that, knowing anyone can leave a review at Google and there's no guarantee they own the phone. > but if all Apple asked was "are you satisfied with iPhone 14" with "yes" & "not at all" options and only surveyed iPhone 14 owners, I can easily see the number being 99%. "and only surveyed iPhone 14 owners" 451 Research's own statement on their survey mentions _no…

> And also, how valid would you consider a "satisfied" rating from an iPhone 14 owner who'd never owned anything but an iPhone?

Why wouldn’t it be valid? If somebody says they’re satisfied with something, take them at their word. There’s no shortage of people who complain about anything and everything, especially if they paid money for the thing in question, and especially if they paid a lot of money.

Apple is a single vendor that makes a very small number of models and earned $205.49 billion on iPhones alone in 2022. This excludes a lot of their “services” revenue of which I’m convinced the Lion’s share and then some is also basically just iPhone revenue that wouldn’t exist without specifically the iPhones tied to them. You don’t get anywhere near that for one company on one hardware product division in one year without some seriously high customer satisfaction and repeat buyers.

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#74

Post by bredren »

NineStarPoint wrote: post #27

So obviously 99% is impossibly high, but iPhones (and well made flagship phones in general) being some of the most popular things ever made wouldn’t be very surprising to me. People’s lives revolve around their phones. They’re probably people’s most used item after their bed. And for the most part they work really well. That 20% of people don’t like Thanksgiving and the Shawshank redemption isn’t surprising to me, an…

> I don’t think that means the iPhone couldn’t have higher than 90% approval rating.

I would be surprised if iPhone didn't have 90%+ customer satisfaction narrowly scoped to usage of the phone.

The product as hardware combined with software and supporting services are the best money can buy. Apple regularly pushes the smartphone category forward on fronts neglected by other companies.

That said, consumers seem to think more broadly about their experience than just the phone. For example an unexpected failure of an official or 3rd party case might influence overall satisfaction. The article mentions a 3% difference based on 5G availability, as another.

So without an explanation of the carve out, 99% does seem a bit too good to be true.

Apple should publish how these numbers are arrived at. If its a decent measurement it could help set an evolving standard for the category.

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#75

Post by jrockway »

worrycue wrote: post #33
pm2222 wrote: post #5

If only there’s no carrier lock and photos can be backed up easily to personal storage.

Carrier locks are not an Apple-only thing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_lock Seem to be a common feature on most phones. Don’t like it? Bug your government to outlaw the use of the feature like “Canada,[5] Chile,[6] China, Israel,[7] and Singapore”. iTunes backups my photos. No idea how to access them though - apart from restoring to a working phone.

> iTunes backups my photos. No idea how to access them though - apart from restoring to a working phone.

You should be able to go to iCloud.com and log in. If you have the E2E encryption enabled, it will ask you to give iCloud the decryption key, so the webserver can serve you the decrypted files. (This ability can be turned off if you're really paranoid.)

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#76

Post by photonerd »

FireBeyond wrote: post #51
asutekku wrote: post #7

They are using Google reviews as proxy for customer satisfaction. I really can't take rest of the article seriously after that, knowing anyone can leave a review at Google and there's no guarantee they own the phone. Sure, 99% satisfaction rate is pretty much impossible, but if all Apple asked was "are you satisfied with iPhone 14" with "yes" & "not at all" options and only surveyed iPhone 14 owners, I can easily see…

> I really can't take rest of the article seriously after that, knowing anyone can leave a review at Google and there's no guarantee they own the phone. > but if all Apple asked was "are you satisfied with iPhone 14" with "yes" & "not at all" options and only surveyed iPhone 14 owners, I can easily see the number being 99%. "and only surveyed iPhone 14 owners" 451 Research's own statement on their survey mentions _no…

> how valid would you consider a "satisfied" rating from an iPhone 14 owner who'd never owned anything but an iPhone?

Very? It’s a subjective position no matter what but they know their own satisfaction level better than you do, certainly.

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#78

Post by lolinder »

loeg wrote: post #58

The original title, "Apple claims 99% iPhone 14 satisfaction. Is that possible? (No). We investigate" (which this was submitted under originally) is less click-baity than the current version: "Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?"

I pinged dang to ask him to change the title to match the title of the actual article, because it was obvious from the rate of upvotes and the quality of comments that the title as submitted was inflamatory.

I can't measure clicks, but the pace of upvotes on this submission slowed dramatically after dang changed it: it had reached ~50 upvotes in about half an hour (~100 upvotes an hour), and now it's been here for another hour with only ~30 more upvotes (~15 upvotes an hour).

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#79

Post by threeseed »

post_break wrote: post #3

Just like how they compare the M2 processors to an Intel iMac in bench marks which in itself is kind of ridiculous, this is unsurprising.

They do that to encourage existing Apple users to upgrade.

Apple is growing market share but not massively so. Hence new revenue will need to come from it's existing user base.

Re: Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?

#80

Post by threeseed »

sezycei wrote: post #37
ars wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really can't take rest of the article seriously after that, knowing anyone can leave a review at Google and there's no guarantee they own the phone. Do you mean you can't take Apple seriously? The article is calling out this issue, not engaging in it. > I can easily see the number being 99%. No, it can't. It's utterly impossible for it to be 99% unless it's fake data.

> utterly impossible No, it's not. Unbelievably unlikely? For sure.

No it's very likely in fact.

iPhone has been around for 15 years so there almost isn't a person on this planet who doesn't know (a) what it is, (b) what the competition is and (c) whether it's a right fit for them.

So if you're surveying existing users you're talking to people who knew before they purchased the iPhone that it was going to be a suitable fit for them. So of course the survey is going to be highly biased in favour of a positive rating.

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