While the average consumer might wrongly assume that Apple is the king of the hill when it comes to Smartphone customer satisfaction, it is Samsung actually that takes home the top prize. The Android based Smartphone maker has actually surpassed Apple for the first time according to a new American Customer Satisfaction Index report issued last week.
The report is somewhat misleading, Apple is still selling twice as many handsets as Samsung, but customers are becoming quite a bit less pleased with their iOS devices. The new report shows the opposite is happening when it comes to Samsung. On the customer satisfaction scale, Samsung rose 7 percent to 81 out of 100.
Apple’s phones dropped on the index for the second straight year and while the 2 percent drop wasn’t a lot, it was enough to push the score of 79 just below it’s closest competitor. "Samsung has gone from up-and-comer to top-of-the-heap on the strength of its smartphone portfolio," ACSI Managing Director David VanAmburg said in a statement that accompanied the report.
VanAmburg added that Apple’s luster hasn’t worn away completely, but its older models are dragging down its overral score. The company’s director said part of the problem is Apple’s yearly refresh seems to be quite a bit longer when compared with Android, which seemingly has a new model hitting the market every week.
Customer satisfaction for mobile devices in general has been dropping the last couple of years. When it comes to tablets, satisfaction is dropping almost across the board. When dealing with smartphones, the consumer is turning its lack of happiness at devices on the mobile carriers. High costs for data plans and overloaded networks are making the satisfaction indexes stay at 72 for the second straight year.
Among carriers, Verizon is the king of the hill with a score of 75. The other competitors are all battling it out for second. T-Mobile scored a 69 while Sprint and AT&T both recorded scores of 68.
Edited by
Maurice Nagle 
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