A new survey conducted by UBS Research shows that Apple has the highest retention rate among smartphone manufacturers. While this may not be much of a surprise, the lead it holds over others might be. 89% of current iPhone owners plan to stick with Apple for their next smartphone purchase, a slight drop from 95% in the March 2010 survey. The next closest competitor is HTC with 39%.
In general, retention rates appear to be falling for most of the OEMs. Relatively, Apple’s retention rates have held up incredibly well even as its market share has risen. Interestingly, when we look at all consumers who are considering changing handset OEM provider, Apple remains a significant net beneficiary. Alongside Apple, only Samsung and HTC also appear as net beneficiaries (more users won than users lost). Interestingly, of our respondents who are current Apple subscribers, only 6% indicated that they intended to move to a different OEM, with 4% saying they were undecided. This suggests that the retention rate for Apple could end up being as high as 93%.
In third place was RIM, its retention rate dropping significantly from 62 percent in March 2010 to 33 percent on this survey. Samsung (28%) and Motorola (25%) rounded out the top five.
At an operating system level, Android could only muster a 55 percent rating.