91mobiles Great Indian Smartphone Survey 2024: a summary

We have concluded our Great Indian Smartphone Survey 2024, where over 8,000 participants were asked several questions based on how satisfied they were with various attributes of their smartphones. We asked these participants about the after-sales quality imparted to them and their buying preferences with regard to phones and gadgets. With the final data in our hands garnered from the participants’ responses, here’s a summary of the final survey report.

Trends in smartphone ownership

• In our latest survey, we found that Samsung, Xiaomi, and Vivo occupy the top three positions in ownership with a share of 16.7 percent, 16.1 percent, and 13.9 percent, respectively.
• Realme has an ownership share of 12.8 percent, followed by OPPO with 7.5 percent. OnePlus is right behind OPPO with an ownership percentage of 7.4 among the participants.
• Apple sits with a share of 2.5 percent while newcomers like Nothing and Honor account for 2.1 percent and 1.2 percent of users, respectively.

Phone brands people plan to shift to

• Around 18.3 percent of respondents claimed that they would buy a Samsung phone next, followed by OnePlus and Motorola with 13.2 percent and 10.9 percent of people willing to pick a phone from these brands next, respectively.
• Apple is preferred by 9.6 percent of the respondents and sits right below Vivo, which has gained 9.8 percent of votes from the participants wanting a Vivo smartphone.

Change in ownership share of brands in future

• Apple may gain the most number of new customers and may see a rise from 2.5 percent to 9.6 percent in ownership share among the survey participants.
• OnePlus and Motorola may also fetch new users in the future as more people are willing to purchase phones from these brands.
• On the other hand, Realme and Xiaomi may not see any growth in ownership share. Realme could drop down to 6.5 percent share from 12.8 percent while Xiaomi could see a downfall in new users by 9 percent, per the survey data.

Smartphone user satisfaction across brands

In this section, we look at how satisfied the survey participants are with various smartphone aspects such as battery life, display quality, software experience, and more.

• Kicking off with phone speeds, iQOO takes the lead with 76.2 percent of its users being completely satisfied with how swiftly the phone performs in day-to-day usage. This is followed by Nothing, OnePlus, and Apple.
• Surprisingly, Infinix is placed higher than heavy-hitters such as Samsung and Vivo when it comes to user satisfaction with the phone’s speed.

• Motorola is significantly ahead of others in providing the best battery reliability, per 58.9 percent of its users. OnePlus, iQOO, and Infinix fill up three of the top four spots.
• It appears that Apple users are not impressed with their iPhone’s battery backup and thus the brand has been voted the least in this area.

• iQOO once again leads the charts as it satisfied 69.7 percent of its users over the past year with its phones’ rear cameras. Interestingly, Nothing outpaces Apple in rear camera user satisfaction by 1.6 percent votes.
• Trailing behind are OnePlus, Vivo, and Samsung.

• Coming to the front cameras, Apple has found a happy userbase with 59 percent of its users claiming to be apt with the iPhone’s selfie shooter.
• Vivo is placed second while Nothing settles for the third position. Both brands have seemingly advanced their front camera algorithms ensuring users are satisfied with the camera outputs.

• Upon asking the survey respondents about their experience with their phones’ displays, OnePlus came on top with 76.7 percent of user votes indicating the brand offers the best screen capabilities.
• Nothing and Apple fetch second and third place in this aspect with 74.5 percent and 71.1 percent of votes, respectively.

• Nothing has a major lead in software satisfaction where the London-based company garnered 80 percent of votes from its users for providing the best software performance.
• OnePlus is behind Apple by just 0.1 percent in software performance regard but continues to offer a reliable experience.

• iQOO came on top in the most value-for-money aspect with 85.2 percent of people picking it over other brands.
• Nothing also appears to be a brand favoured for launching value-for-money phones. Similarly, OnePlus and POCO users feel they made a value-for-money smartphone purchase.

• Since Nothing and iQOO have excelled in providing good smartphone experiences to their users in various areas, both brands are considered to provide the best overall satisfaction, per their users.
• Apple, OnePlus, and Vivo are some of the other brands with a good overall satisfaction percentage.
• Meanwhile, OPPO is the least preferred by its users when it comes to delivering a satisfactory experience as it just had 27.6 percent of votes.
  

User satisfaction with service quality

• In case of any faults or damage to their phone, almost 50 percent of the audience in the survey have visited their phone brand’s service center.
• Just 10.8 percent of the respondents had a very good experience with the after-sales service, 15.3 percent of the people claimed to have had a fine experience.
• The remainder of the sample size was not offered a satisfactory resolution when they took their phone to a service center for repair.

• Among the brands with the best service quality, per the respondents, Infinix tops the rankings with 47.2 percent of its customers being totally satisfied with the brand’s servicing.
• iQOO, Vivo, and Apple are right behind Infinix in offering users a reliable journey to the service center.
• The least favourable brand in service quality appears to be Motorola which gained just 24.8 of votes from its users. This is a sign that the brand failed to meet the after-sales expectations of most of its customers.

Brand loyalty among smartphone users

• Apple enjoys the highest brand loyalty among the survey participants. 62.6 percent of Apple users are willing to purchase the brand again in the future.
• Samsung is placed second while Nothing and iQOO grab the third and fourth positions respectively.
• Realme and Poco have the least number of loyal users which could be due to the users having a bad experience with their current device.

Here’s how smartphone brands in India may gain or lose customers:

When and where people plan to buy their next phone

• Around 40 percent of the survey participants plan to purchase a new smartphone during the upcoming festive sales held on e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart.
• One-fourth portion of the users are willing to buy a new phone in the next five to six months.
• The remaining participants will not upgrade to a new phone anytime soon, possibly because they’re not facing any issues with their current phone or recently got a new one.

• When shopping for smartphones, Flipkart came on top as the most preferred e-commerce platform with over 34.4 percent of picks by the respondents.
• Immediately after Flipkart is Amazon with 32.7 percent of votes. This could be because many brands sell their phones through Flipkart.
• Interestingly, many people also prefer to purchase phones from brand’s own stores such as Samsung.com, Mi.com, etc. The remaining users use platforms like Tata CliQ to get a new phone.

Other than a smartphone, the survey respondents plan to get the following products on offers and discounts in the upcoming festive sales:

• 18.3 percent may get audio products such as earphones, headphones, or speakers.
• 13.6 percent could get a smartwatch or fitness tracker on offer.
• Laptops are said to be purchased by 13.1 percent of participants in the sale period.
• 10.4 percent are willing to get a smart TV if they get hold of a good deal.
• Others may opt for tablets, wireless chargers, and smart rings in the festive sales while 21.7 percent of participants have no plans of getting anything.