Topic: Surveys
HomePod Purchase Intent is at 14% of iPhone Owners, per Raymond James Survey (Jul 11, 2017)
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Amazon Said to Have 85 Million Prime Subs in the US (But Probably Has Fewer) (Jul 7, 2017)
New research Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) suggests that Amazon has 85 million Prime subscribers in the US, based on a recent survey. That number feels quite a bit too high to me – my analysis of Amazon’s year-end 2016 financials suggested a number closer to 70 million globally, which of course includes at least a few million subscribers in other countries. A survey I did a year ago suggested that a majority (over 60%) of households in the US didn’t have Prime, so it would be a massive turnaround in just a year for a similar percentage to have a Prime subscription. So I take the overall number with a pinch of salt while acknowledging that the directional stuff is correct. One interesting secondary data point is that 28% of Prime households are using the newer monthly subscription option rather than the annual option – that also feels a little high, but it’s indicative that people are drawn to the benefits of that option, including the smaller one-time outlay, the flexibility of a month-to-month subscription, and the familiarity of that model.
via GeekWire
Nearly Half US Broadband Customers Have Streaming TV, Many Have Several Services (Jun 19, 2017)
This is a great counterpart to the FuboTV piece I posted earlier, because it illustrates the state of the current over-the-top streaming TV landscape. The survey quoted here from IBB Consulting suggests that nearly half of US broadband customers have at least one streaming TV service, with over half of those in turn subscribing to several. Moreover, nearly two thirds of those subscribing to these over-the-top services also still subscribe to traditional TV. That paints a picture in which subscription VOD (SVOD) services are both complements and substitutes to traditional pay TV, and even then largely fail to meet all of consumers’ needs for video. This is still a very fragmented marketplace, in which even the best providers are only partially meeting people’s needs. That creates both a near-term opportunity for someone to do better at meeting those needs, but also a long-term threat of consolidation as consumers balk at having to pay for and manage multiple subscriptions and long for someone to bring it all together. Given all the assets and relationships held by the major legacy pay TV companies, they’ve certainly in a strong position to aggregate some of this fragmentation on the part of consumers, while platform companies like Apple and Amazon are also positioning themselves in different ways as subscription aggregators, presenting another possible way forward. Regardless, as today’s FuboTV fundraising news suggests, there’s lots of activity still to come here.
via Multichannel
iPhones and Samsung Galaxy Models Lead US Smartphone Satisfaction Rankings (May 24, 2017)
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Drivers Trust Carmakers More than Tech or Ride Sharing Companies for Autonomy (May 24, 2017)
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YouTube and Netflix Dominate Teens’ Video Viewing (May 2, 2017)
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Apple’s AirPods Have a 98% Customer Satisfaction Rating (May 1, 2017)
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Apple Watch Series 2 Satisfaction & Usage Survey – Wristly (Mar 13, 2017)
Wristly is one of the only organizations out there which does regular Apple Watch user surveys, and as such provides some very useful insights into how users feel about their Watches and how they use them. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but I’ll call out two points in particular: user satisfaction has risen over the past year as the number of users has grown significantly, and the drivers are the new hardware and new software Apple has released in the past year. That both have driven increased satisfaction is obviously good for Apple, but the fact that the new software improved the experience has possibly also worked against bigger hardware sales – I know my first generation Watch performs well enough running the new software that I don’t feel the need to run out and buy a Series 2 device, and I’m guessing the same is true for others. But of course the Watch has sold reasonably well regardless, and so the user base continues to expand, albeit still at a fairly small scale relative to massive mainstream categories like smartphones.
via Wristly
23% of US Adults Stream Netflix Daily – Leichtman Research Group (Mar 6, 2017)
There are lots of interesting numbers in this Leichtman Research Group survey, and I just picked one of them for the headline here: that very nearly a quarter of US adults use Netflix every single day. That’s pretty remarkable off the back of under 50 million paid subscriptions in the US. Also worth noting: the vast majority of Netflix viewers (81%) watch Netflix on a TV (by implication, at least sometimes) – this isn’t just people watching on phones and computers, meaning it’s a much more direct substitute for traditional TV viewing. More US households now have Netflix (54%) than have a DVR (53%) for the first time. And there’s lots more here too – the reality is that viewing habits are shifting dramatically, while the underlying spending on pay TV still hasn’t shifted at all, and that’s because many households still feel that traditional pay TV offers either decent value or the only way to get the content they have to have, even if they’re also paying for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, or something else. Somewhere in the next couple of years, that reaches a tipping point – no market has ever gone for too long with a dramatic mismatch between usage and spending – but it doesn’t feel like we’re there yet.
Samsung’s reputation nosedives in the US after Galaxy Note 7 snafu – The Verge (Feb 20, 2017)
As usual, it would be great to understand in more detail the methodology behind this survey, but it’s not available. The Verge seems to have got the rankings wrong – from what I can tell, Samsung was 7th and not 3rd last year – but it’s also worth noting that Samsung’s score dropped from 80.44 to 75.17, which sounds a lot less dramatic than dropping from 3rd (or even 7th) to 49th. The fact is that there are a lot of companies clustered together between 75 and 87 points and so a small drop in the score produces a big drop in rankings. Since the survey was also conducted in November and December last year, when the Note7 debacle was still very fresh in people’s minds, I’m guessing it would score a lot better just a few months from now. Though the Verge picked up on Samsung’s drop as their headline, it’s worth noting where other tech companies sit too: Amazon is #1 (score 86.27), Apple #5 (82.07), Google #8 (82.00), Tesla #9 (81.70), Netflix #18 (79.86), and Microsoft #20 (79.29), all of which classify as either very good or excellent. It’s also worth noting that big cable companies like Comcast and Charter score in the low 60s, which qualifies as “poor”, while the major wireless carriers score 66-72 (“fair” to “good”), with T-Mobile top and Sprint bottom.
via The Verge (official release here)
Amazon Prime membership approaching 50% of US households, says Baird – Twitter (Jan 6, 2017)
This report from Baird’s retail analysts cites its own survey on several points around selection and Prime. It estimates that there are 55-60 million Prime households in the US, out of around 125m total households. Some of the biggest expansion categories in selection are apparel, office/industrial, and home/kitchen, where Amazon has historically been weaker. There are tons of other data points in the linked report, which is well worth a read.
via Carl Quintanilla on Twitter
Apple V. Google A ‘Stable Duopoly’ in the U.S., Says Stifel – Tech Trader Daily – Barrons.com (Dec 21, 2016)
Interesting data here on purchasing patterns for smartphones in the US – obviously iOS and Android dominate, but it’s notable that Google Pixel buyers are mostly coming from the Android, not iPhone, base. The Pixel launch certainly seems to have been a success, but that’s been bad news for other Android vendors, not Apple, so far.
via Apple V. Google A ‘Stable Duopoly’ in the U.S., Says Stifel – Tech Trader Daily – Barrons.com