Surveys

Apple has won a second award for customer satisfaction in as many days.

Beyond Philosophy, which assists companies in improving customer experience, announced today that Apple delivers the "most admired customer experience" in the marketplace, besting Amazon.com, Zappos, Starbucks, and Disney, respectively, in the top 5.

"Apple has married all the elements of its experience and connected with its customers in a deeply emotional, irrational way," Steven Walden, senior head of research and consulting at Beyond Philosophy, said in a statement. "Amazon put a stake in the ground when it announced it would become … Read more

Google, Apple, and Microsoft are the three most valuable brands overall worldwide, according to Brand Finance, a London-based brand valuation consultancy firm.

The annual Brand Finance Global 100 ranks the most valuable brands in the world from a variety of industries based on the strength, risk, and future potential of a brand relative to its competitors while also accounting for major financial, political, and economic changes over the last six months.

Google retained its position on this list as world's most valuable brand, worth a staggering $48.2 billion. Apple emerged as the second most valuable brand in the … Read more

Phones from Apple and Samsung topped a J.D. Power satisfaction survey, which cited size, screen quality, battery life, and processing speeds as crucial. The survey also said satisfaction was high for 4G-capable phones.

Apple ranked highest in customer satisfaction among smartphone manufacturers while Samsung was No.1 among traditional mobile phone manufacturers, according to the results of two J.D. Power studies released Thursday.

Satisfaction is tied closely to the weight, size, quality of displays, processing speeds, battery life, and touch screen capabilities, according to the studies.

For example, satisfaction ratings are highest (8.1 on a 10-point scale) … Read more

There's almost no place a tablet won't go these days--more than a third of slate owners say they've even taken their tab into the bathroom with them.

No word on whether the old-school print magazines and newspapers of the world consider this new development to be a slight or a relief.

The finding comes from a June online survey of 200 tablet users at companies of various sizes by Staples Advantage, the business-to-business division of the office supply company. It found that the tablet trend is leading to more productivity, both in the potty and beyond.

In addition to the 35 percent of respondents who admitted to touch-screen multitasking in the loo, 78 percent use a tablet in bed and 30 percent use theirs in restaurants. Sixty percent of users also said they take their tablet with them on vacation and use it to check in or do work.

Three-quarters of tablet owners use their slate to check e-mail, while a third are reviewing and editing documents via their touch screens.

"Tablets offer fantastic convenience and a better work/life balance, making it easy for employees to keep information with them and utilize business apps, no matter where they go." says Ed Ludwigson, vice president and general manager for Staples Technology Solutions, in a statement.

Indeed, nothing says productivity like taking care of business...while taking care of business.… Read more

Almost a third of all those twentysomethings you see walking around talking on their cell phones are just pretending--perhaps so they can avoid you.

That's one of the findings of a new Pew Research Center study that surveyed more than 2,000 U.S. adults about their cell phone usage habits. Thirty percent of survey respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 said they had used their phone to avoid interacting with the people around them at some point in the last 30 days.

When expanded to cell phone owners of all ages, only 13 percent pretend to be on the phone to get out of unwanted small talk or confrontations with the landlord.

We probably shouldn't be surprised that so many of those calls in public are just for show, because who actually makes a call instead of texting these days?

Pew found that 92 percent of smartphone owners and 59 percent of other cell phone owners text from their phone. Sending and receiving texts is the most common use for cell phones outside of voice calls, tied with taking photos. But only 80 percent of smartphone owners and 36 percent of feature phone users actually send those photos via their phone.… Read more

The risk of stepping on a rusty nail and contracting tetanus is nothing like the horror of spending a full week without an iPhone.

That's the sentiment of more than 40 percent of iPhone users queried in a national TeleNav survey who say they'd prefer to go shoeless for a week than give up their beloved smartphone. To be fair, the survey respondents were not informed that there is no known app for treating tetanus.

The online survey asked 514 American owners of both smartphones and feature phones a number of probing questions about their relationship with their treasured device.

iPhone owners seemed to have the strongest connection, with 40 percent preferring to give up their toothbrush over their phone, as opposed to only 22 percent of Android owners valuing their phone more than oral hygiene.

Chronic halitosis shouldn't deter an iPhone owner in the romance department though, so long as the target of his or her affection is another iPhone fan. The survey found that 83 percent of iPhone users thought other iPhone users would make the best romantic partners.

To keep that relationship healthy, it's apparently important not to force your partner to choose between you and a phone. … Read more

Even though it's still in testing, Apple's iCloud has come in a very close second place to Amazon in the minds of mobile developers looking to connect their applications to the cloud, a new survey has found.

In the latest quarterly survey of mobile application developers put on by Appcelerator and IDC, half the 1,125 developers surveyed on a particular question said they planned to connect to Apple's upcoming iCloud service in the next 12 to 18 months, which was just 1 percent shy of Amazon's 51 percent leading share. Trailing both was Microsoft's … Read more

iPad leads in brand satisfaction among U.S. consumers, though a relatively obscure tablet maker came in a close second, according to IHS iSuppli.

Rivals face a steep challenge in the U.S. because consumers are fixated on Apple's tablet to the detriment of other brands, according to the "U.S. Tablet Consumer Preference" study released today by iSuppli.

"Apple's competitors in the tablet market already are facing major challenges in offering products that can match the iPad's combination of optimized hardware, software, operating system, applications, content and app store," Rhoda Alexander, an … Read more

Apple's iPhone 5 hasn't even been announced yet, but already U.S. consumers are poised to buy it.

According to PriceGrabber, which conducted a study earlier this month with 2,852 U.S. respondents, 35 percent of consumers plan to buy the iPhone 5 when it's released. Moreover, the online-shopping service found that 51 percent of consumers will buy Apple's reportedly upcoming smartphone in its first year of availability, while 31 percent will pick it up before the end of 2011.

The only issue is, there isn't an iPhone 5 for those consumers to buy. … Read more