Study: Apple is for Women, Samsung is for Men

Brandon Dimmel's picture

A new study suggests that most Americans favor Apple when it comes to mobile devices, though Samsung isn't too far from the top.

The study was performed by KS Mobile, a San Francisco-based app maker for the Android and iOS platforms. The study was carried out between February 6 and 10, 2014, and involved 1,000 people aged 18 and older.

Apple is for Women, Samsung is for Men: Study Suggests

Of the people interviewed, nearly half of all women said they favored Apple mobile products, such as the iPhone. Only women aged 40 to 49 said they favored Samsung products.

On the other hand, most men prefer Samsung products, such as the Galaxy S4. Only men aged 50 to 59 said they preferred Apple products.

The report also suggests that women were more attached to their Apple products than men were to their Samsung devices.

Overall, 39 per cent of respondents said they preferred Apple devices. Samsung was next in line, with 29 per cent of the votes.

Young people and those over the age of 60 were the biggest Apple fans. Nearly half of all people under 30 and 36 per cent of people over age 60 said they preferred Apple products.

Windows Phone, BlackBerry Platforms Not So Popular

Unfortunately for Microsoft, only 3 per cent of all respondents said their favorite mobile brand was Nokia, which uses the Windows Phone platform.

One in four of the people interviewed by KS Mobile said they didn't have a favorite mobile brand. More specifically, 27.3 per cent of men and 23.7 per cent of women said they felt no passionate attachment to any mobile platform. (Source: cnet.com)

Only 2 per cent of respondents (or one in fifty people) said their favorite mobile brand was BlackBerry. This could be a sign that the Waterloo, Canada-based firm's recent attempts to recover a portion of the evolving mobile market (through the release of the relatively new BlackBerry 10 platform) have failed.

Performance, Security Both Big Concerns

KS Mobile's study also examined smartphone performance.

One in ten respondents said they experienced significant performance problems within 90 days of buying their device, suggesting that there's still lots of room for improvement.

Meanwhile, twice as many people said they experienced serious performance issues within 6 to 12 months.

"No matter what brand of mobile device you prefer, our research [suggests] that it's only a matter of time before your new smartphone is in need of some performance maintenance," noted KS Mobile product manager Adam Morley. (Source: yahoo.com)

Finally, the survey suggests that many Americans are concerned about smartphone security. Two in three respondents (or 66 per cent) said they fear their smartphone security needs are not being adequately addressed by mobile companies.

What's Your Opinion?

Do your feelings about the major mobile brands line up with those of the people interviewed by KS Mobile? Do you feel a passionate attachment to any one mobile brand? And do you believe that there's still lots of room for improvement when it comes to smartphone performance and security?

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Comments

ivercjohns's picture

Your article was enlightening. It appears to me about right what your study finds and what I have observed.

I have had similar experiences with performance problems with my Samsung Galaxy III. Now, however, it is running smoothly.

darylhutchins's picture

Sampling 1000 people constitutes a "study" these days?

Dennis Faas's picture

To be honest: when I first read this story, I thought that a sample size of 1,000 was not enough, either.

After discussing this issue with our in-house writers Brandon Dimmel and John Lister, John had this to say:

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Just to let you know, the vast majority of studies / surveys use sample groups of 1,000. It's counter-intuitive, but with a well-designed and carried out survey, 1,000 is plenty.

It's down to complicated math, but in short increasing from a few hundred to a thousand makes a massive difference in reliability/accuracy, but increasing much above a couple of thousand makes so little difference that it's usually not worth the extra expense and time:

http://whyfiles.org/009poll/math_primer.html

http://www.dfrank.com/samplesize.htm

What really matters is that the sample is representative. For example, if you are doing a survey that's meant to represent the general public, around half of your sample group should be male and half female.

There's a great piece on opinion polls (that's also valid for surveys generally) explaining this at:

http://www.britishpollingcouncil.org/questions.html

The short conclusion is that if a survey / study is badly conducted, it doesn't really matter how many people are questioned. If it's well designed and conducted, one or two thousand is enough.

Also, a bigger sample group is more important if you are breaking down the results into lots of groups (ex: age categories) rather than just giving the results as the entire population.