Business Users Rate iPhone 'Among the Best'

J.D. Power and Associates' "2008 Business Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study" ranked the iPhone overall best of class, easily beating out Research In Motion and Samsung, which ranked well above average. The report was released today.

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J.D. Power ranks on a 1,000-point scale, with 681 being the industry average. Rankings:

• Apple: 778
• RIM: 703
• Samsung: 701
• HTC: 676
• Motorola: 659
• Palm: 644

"You have Apple by themselves," said Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services for J.D. Power and Associates. "You have BlackBerry and Samsung together." Then there is everybody else. I spoke with Kirk late this afternoon.

But battery life bit Apple hard, as the low ranking starkly contrasted against the four categories where the device rated "among the best." Fortunately for Apple, only 10 percent of business users consider battery life a priority. I'm surprised, although maybe years of Palming around diminished expectations about the feature's priority.

During August and September, J.D. Power surveyed 1,388 business wireless end users owning smart phones. Timing explains one of the survey's oddities. The average price for iPhones was $337. I asked Kirk if that indicated more people were buying the 16GB iPhone. Rather, he said, because of timing the survey was about equally split between original iPhone and iPhone 3G users. The older device cost twice as much as its successor.

The average price for smart phones dropped to $216 from $261 in 2007. Motorola average prices were lowest at $169.

Common tasks favor Apple's platform approach:

• 34 percent of smart phone owners download third-party software
• 36 percent download travel programs
• 43 percent download business applications
• 49 percent download games

Business users' reasons for choosing smart phones mesh well with iPhone features, such as Internet and e-mail capabilities. Same is true of capabilities they look for:

• Voice recognition (15 percent)
• Touch-screen (23 percent)
• Wi-Fi (25 percent)
• GPS (37 percent)

I've long said that manufacturers following Apple's touch-screen approach are chasing the wrong feature. Palm has had touch for years. It's not touch per se, but how it fits into a broader approach to user interface design.

Age has much to do with how devices are used. "The younger you are, the more likely you are to use all the bells and whistles," Kirk said.

Business smart phone users are into their geek wear—or is that ware? Sixty-nine percent own hands-free headsets and 74 wireless headsets (what's the difference, J.D. Power?). Eighty-six of those rascally Motorola smart phone owners use wireless headsets, compared with 60 percent of iPhone users.

As smart phones increasingly become small computers, they pick up some of the gaff. "With PCs you have software issues, and we're seeing those with smart phones," Kirk told me today. About 44 percent of business smart phone owners must reboot their devices at least once a week, while 34 suffer application freezes or lockups.

This whole PC thing brought up another topic: the smart phone as a PC alternative during the economically strained holidays. Kirk was skeptical about economic forces being enough to forestall the purchase of a second or third PC for a smart phone. If a PC and smart phone are both up and running, most people would choose to use the computer, he said.

But Kirk and I have different computing habits, which might explain why we disagree here. He's happy to watch TV and work on his laptop. Not me, I'll read the news on my iPhone, with the TV on. Why? Because the user interface makes applications like NYTimes and AP's Mobile News Network easier reading than the PC Web browser. For me, anyway.

J.D. Power wouldn't provide a copy of the report, just a synopsis and the gracious interview with Kirk. You can be sure Apple will be touting this one. That's fine for now. But competition is picking up. RIM has got some great new devices, and then there is the T-Mobile G1 and other Android-based Google phones coming.

Kirk predicts that Apple will answer competitors "The price is going to go down as more generations of iPhones come out," he said. "Like iPod."

[Please send your tips or rumors to watchtips at gmail.com].

Posted by Joe Wilcox on November 6, 2008 7:44 PM