Market research firm J.D. Power and Associates has released its 2008 Business Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study…and the results are a little surprising. For decades, corporate users have generally been less-than-keen on Apple products, eschewing the company’s closed hardware ecosystem and almost non-existent enterprise-level solutions. But with smartphones, all that seems to have been thrown to the winds: J.D. Power finds that the Apple iPhone ranks highest in customer satisfaction amongst business wireless smartphone users.
“With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, Apple has clearly differentiated itself from the competition in areas that are most important to business smartphone users,” said J.D> Powers’ senior director of wireless services Kirk Parsons, in a statement. “By making basic applications and features easy to use and providing functionality in a thin, lightweight device, Apple has performed well in exceeding customer expectations.”
The Apple iPhone scored 778 out of a possible 1,000 points in the survey’s scale, ranking particularly highly for ease of operation, design, and handset features. BlackBerry came in second with a score of 703, just edging out Samsung with a 701.
The study also found that about a quarter of smartphone users have at least one software-related problem with their devices. Of those users, 44 percent report having to reboot their phones at least once a week, while about a third (34 percent) report application malfunctions or freezes happen at least once a week.
Some 34 percent of business smartphone users report downloading third-party software for their phones. And what would be the most popular category of third-party software for these heavy-hitting, always-on, leading-edge, pro-active, category-defining business folk? That would be games.
