Apple claims that its internal research shows that the main reason US smartphone consumers purchased an Android phone instead of an iPhone was in order to stay with their current carrier. The study only covers the US smartphone marked and was brought up by Samsung today as court evidence in the patent infringement trial between the two companies in Northern California.
The study was published at Apple in January of 2011, and shows that 48 percent of those surveyed said that they had went with an Android phone because they “wanted to stay with current wireless provider.”
36 percent said that they “trusted the Google brand,” while 30 percent just like bigger screens. Sometimes, bigger *is* better, according to these folks.
The reason Samsung brought this evidence to light was to show that, contrary to Apple’s claims in court, that many people purchased Samsung phones for reasons other than brand confusion.
As we well know, Apple has been able to allow the iPhone to work with several carriers, making some of the point moot. Apple had to make changes to FaceTime and iMessage, according to CNET, in order to make things work the same across different carrier’s protocols.
The Above results do cast a different light on the proceedings, as Samsung clearly wanted to do. it’s got to be especially damning to have the data presented by Samsung from an actual Apple document, though turnabout is fair play. Apple has done the same thing to Samsung during the trial, using internal documents from the Korean electronics manufacturer to prove Apple’s infringement case.
If almost half the consumers surveyed chose an Android device for reasons other than “I thought it was an iPhone,” can Apple truly claim patent infringement? They surely can, but the row has gotten just that little bit more tough to hoe.
Source: CNET
