Rating: is Android a phone maker, a model of device or a market?
Some very interesting research into mobile brands has been carried out by Roxy Palace, which develops games across all mobile OS platforms. But then the company would have to because it is actually behind mobile casinos. Now, we’re not quite sure where Roxy was trying to go with its research but in doing so it has come up with some interesting research into mobile brands. This is a good example: – ten per cent of respondents were able to name Research In Motion (RIM) as makers of the BlackBerry as opposed to 64 per cent who thought Blackberry was the manufacturer of mobile phones rather than the model name. Actually, that’s good going. Better still for RIM, the poll found that the iPhone was still the best-known smartphone model on the market but it was followed by … BlackBerry.
So those industry experts who keep writing off RIM and the BlackBerry fail to appreciate the following which it has built up.
Roxy Palace focussed on the results of it s survey concerning the word Android where more than eight in ten mobile phone users are confused about the meaning of the word.
The survey found than 83 per cent of those quizzed were unable to define what Android meant – even though many were using the operating system on their smartphones and tablet devices.
This reminds GoMobile News of the good old days when you asked regular folk which mobile network thought they were connected to and a high percentage would say … Nokia.
By complete contrast to all of this, virtually all of those quizzed (98 per cent) understood that Apple was the manufacturer of the iPhone. The other two per cent were probably off their heads.
Roxy Palace says the survey shows that brand names were found to be generally much better recognised that product types.
85 per cent of those surveyed stating that they had heard of the iPad compared to just 54 per cent who said they knew what the term tablet meant.
Similarly 98 per cent said they had heard of the iPhone yet only 80 per cent were able to accurately explain what a smartphone was.
A spokesman from Roxy Palace reckons that, “The research shows two main things – one that individual products are better recognised than product types and two that the Apple goods such as the iPhone and iPad have much higher levels of awareness amongst consumers than their competitors.”
GoMobile News really liked this bit. He observed that, “There is a lot of confusion out there. If you hang around long enough in a big electrical store you’ll hear someone describe a non-Apple tablet device for example as an HTC iPad.”
Whoever he is, he has definitely spent too long hanging in out in major retailers’ stores.
