WASHINGTON-Handset brands are the most important factor consumers consider when purchasing wireless phones, according to a new survey by ForceNine Consulting and SMS.ac.
Brand was more important than screen type, text-messaging capabilities, phone size and ringtone capabilities, said the report. In the United States, 36 percent of consumers said brand was the most important factor, compared with 30 percent worldwide. Only 8 percent of U.S. respondents named phone size as the most important factor.
“The dominance of brand in the minds of consumers may have an impact on the plans of some carriers to re-brand mobile handsets,” said Andrew Roscoe, partner at ForceNine Consulting and lead analyst of the study. “While we did not ask the specific brand they would prefer, it seems likely that, in many cases, they were thinking of manufacturer brands.”
The report also found that more than half of U.S. consumers decided to purchase their most recent handsets because of availability of new handset features, while special handset offers by carriers triggered one-quarter of respondents to make new handset purchases. Regardless of their motivation for purchasing new handsets, 39 percent of U.S. respondents walked away with free handsets due to subsidy offers, said the report.
“It is ironic that the industry has been so successful in driving handset purchases through feature innovation, yet we cannot break our dependency on handset subsidy,” said Roscoe. “Outside of the U.S., the number of people who were driven to purchase a phone due to a carrier offer is approximately equal to the number of free phones offered. Here in America, we have many people offered free phones that were already committed to the purchase.”
