Peek Report for Smartphones

North American Demand Analysis

Apple and Samsung Finally Recover from Pre Holiday Slump

TM

An Argus Insights White Paper

877-99-ARGUS (877-992-7487) www.argusinsights.com sales@argusinsights.com Dec 2013 Report

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

Table of Contents
Peek Report for Smartphones ......................................................................................................................................................... 1 Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................................................................ 2 Defining Delight and Other Metrics (a brief tutorial) ................................................................................................................................ 3 Delight Landscapes..................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Attribute Funnels ....................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Threat Quadrants ....................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Which Smartphone Brand is Delighting the Market the Most? ..................................................................................................................... 5 Which Handsets are Driving Consumer Demand? .................................................................................................................................... 8 What Is Driving Consumer Perception Of The Mobile Experience? ................................................................................................................ 9 Most Discussed Experience Attributes For The Past 20 Weeks ................................................................................................................. 9 Most Discussed Mobile Usage Scenarios ......................................................................................................................................... 10 How Are OEM Perceptions Shifting Moving Into 2014 ............................................................................................................................ 12 Which Carriers and Retailers Posted The Greatest Holiday Gains? .............................................................................................................. 13 Visions of Purchase Intent within Social ............................................................................................................................................. 14 If You Would Like To Dig Deeper ...................................................................................................................................................... 16 Finally A Social Analytics Platform That Offers Actionable Insights ......................................................................................................... 16 How It Works .......................................................................................................................................................................... 16

2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

Executive Summary
While December has always been a big month for consumer electronics, the holiday season is now a major gift giving/receiving time for the mobile market as well. Retailers and manufacturers alike focused a lot of effort on Black Friday. The impact of this aggressive pricing can be seen below with significant boosts for both Samsung and Apple. It should be noted that post iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C launch, Apple experienced the largest fall off in demand ever seen for any iPhone launch. Samsung demand slowed a week during the iPhone launch and then went on to achieve bigger gains than Apple over the holidays in large part thanks to the inventory clearing deals on the Galaxy S4 offered by Best Buy and the major carriers.

Apple and Samsung Recover from Pre Holiday Slump

Normalized Buzz Volume (z-Score)
4 3 2 1 0 -1 -2

Back to School Lift for Apple and Samsung

iPhone 5S Launch lifts Apple with minor impact on Samsung

Post Black Friday Apple Demand tanks while Samsung stays consistent

Holiday Boost lifts both brands, Samsung more than Apple

Apple

Samsung

Despite the continued dominance of Apple and Samsung, other handset manufacturers are battling it out for third and fourth place. This past month saw surprising gains by Motorola, LG and Sony. For the first time in years Motorola has two handsets in the top ten with the Moto X coming in at 10th place and the lower priced little brother, Moto G delighting entry level customers in 6th place. LGs G2 handset continues to be the best performing underdog handset, eclipsing the prior underdog the HTC One. While none of Sonys handsets made it into the top ten, the new Xperia handsets are delighting the niche customers currently purchasing the phones with a growing level of adoption relative to other brands. BlackBerry was the only brand to really lose mindshare over the holidays fueling assertions that it is only a matter of time before a suitable buyer steps up. The report also dives into detail on which carrier gained the most mindshare over the holidays and which retailer courted customers away from the carriers most effectively. There is also analysis on what are the aspects of the Mobile User Experience driving adoption, which includes analysis of which types of customers drove the holiday bump for Samsung and Apple. The answer may surprise you. The analysis in this report is based entirely on publically available sources. There is additional depth available directly from Argus insights where we can track the performance of specific handsets by carrier, extract the Experience Attributes by brand, and refine forecast models for the entire market. In the coming weeks, Argus Insights will begin integrating data from Chinese consumers and expand coverage to many of the popular brands in Asia, such as Xiaomi, Lenovo, Acer and expand the skus covered for ZTE, Huawei and Alcatel. Please contact us if youd like to see more detailed insights or have any questions regarding our sources or methods.

2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

Defining Delight and Other Metrics (a brief tutorial)

In the quest to answer the question of What about the user experience is driving demand? Argus Insights has developed the Delight Metric based on the star ratings of consumer reviews. This Delight metric, developed initially as part of research at Stanford University, has been a proven predictor of consumer adoption along with the volume of consumer conversation around a product, the Buzz. The graph below shows the actual Monthly Tablet Sales for 2011 and 2012, along with the predictive model created using just the Delight and Buzz Metrics. For those interested in statistics, the model had an Adjusted R Squared of 72.4% and a p-value of 0.0017, meaning that 99.83% of the variation in Tablet sales can be explained using the Argus Insights model.

Comparing NPD Actual Sales to Argus Insights Predictions

$4,500 $4,000 $3,500 $3,000 $2,500 $2,000 $1,500 $1,000 $500 $-

WorldWide Monthly Sales

Millions

$ NPD Sold Actual Predicted Using Argus Insights Metrics

Copyright 2013 Argus Insights, Inc.

Jun-1-2011

Apr-1-2011

Apr-1-2012

Jun-1-2012

May-1-2011

May-1-2012

Nov-1-2011

Nov-1-2012

Aug-1-2011

Aug-1-2012

Mar-1-2011

Mar-1-2012

Sep-1-2012

Figure 1: Comparing actual Tablet Sales to Argus Insights predictive model using proprietary Delight and Buzz metrics.

Delight Landscapes
Delight is normalized from multiple consumer review sources to be -1 to 1, roughly equivalent to one to five stars. Since it is measured from the launch of a product, it can be used to track the market falling in and out of love with a given experience. The graph below shows the Delight and Buzz results for the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 over time. The y-axis is the Delight level and the size of the area of the bubble represents the Buzz levels. This allows comparisons between one product and another or even between brands, using the same normalized metrics of Delight and Buzz. When looking at the entire landscape you can rapidly identify which products and brands are winning the battle for hearts and minds. The next question is always what are they doing different from the competition?
Figure 2: Buzz and Delight for Recent iPhones. Notice rough start for iPhone 5.

Mar-1-2013

Dec-1-2011

Dec-1-2012

Feb-1-2011

Sep-1-2011

Feb-1-2012

Feb-1-2013

Apr-1-2013

Oct-1-2011

Oct-1-2012

Jan-1-2013

Jan-1-2011

Jan-1-2012

Jul-1-2011

Jul-1-2012

2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

Attribute Funnels
The next visualization helps to unpack what is driving the user experience by extracting the topics that are on top of minds and their associated sentiment. These Funnel Diagrams are ranked by the volume of overall topic mentions with the spread of mentions showing how wide spread the positive and negative mentions of these topics are. The Funnel Diagram on the right is an example of the usage scenarios discussed by consumers on the iPhone 5 reviews. You can see for the iPhone 5, consumers still discuss using it as a phone the most, where as discussion of the iPhone as a Laptop Substitute barely registers in the minds of users. Funnels like this help understand what is driving adoption of a particular product and provide powerful comparisons between products and brands. If you're wonder why Blackberry Z10 customers are delighted or why Galaxy S4 customers are not, check out their Funnels.

iPhone 5 Usage Scenarios

-5%
Phone Web Surfing Music Email Movies Gaming Friends Social Media Significant Other Family Skype/Video Chat/Phone Books News/Weather/Sports Messaging Work Coworker Laptop Substitute Figure 3:Attribute Funnel for iPhone 5 Usage Scenarios

-3%

0%

3%

5%

Smartphone Threat Quadrant

0.8
Slow Burners Winners

Threat Quadrants

Another visualization used throughout the report is the Threat Quadrant, which illustrates the relative Nokia 0.7 performance by playing Delight and Buzz against each Apple 0.6 other in a two by two matrix that represents four possible classifications of a product or service: Winner, Samsung 0.5 Loser, Slow Burner and Why Bother. Those products BlackBerry HTC with high Delight and high Buzz relative to the market 0.4 LG are clear Winners. Those who drive lots of 0.3 conversation about the bad experience are Losers. Motorola Products delighting a niche slice of the market are 0.2 called Slow Burners and have a chance to broaden their appeal to a larger segment of the market. Why 0.1 Why Bother? Losers Bother" are products where the few people that even care enough to comment publically say negative 0 things, calling into question why the company bothered 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 to launch the product or service in the first place. The Threat Quadrant on the left details the relative Figure 4: Threat Quadrant for Smartphone Brands showing relative perceptions of Smartphone manufacturers. Since the Consumer perception along with month-to-month changes. Threat Quadrant is a snapshot in time, occasionally we will include trend lines to show the change over the previous snapshot. We will use this snapshot to show the relative brand performance by carrier and the handset rankings at each carrier as well.

2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

Which Smartphone Brand is Delighting the Market the Most?

Argus Insights tracks consumer responses to products using customer authored reviews leveraged by shoppers to support their own purchase decisions. Based on these reviews our metrics have been proven to be leading indicators of future consumer demand. The diagram below shows the latest results for major handset brands in North America.

Handset Brand Performance

1 0.8 0.6 Alcatel Apple BlackBerry Casio HTC Huawei Kyocera 0.2 0 7/25/20138/14/2013 9/3/2013 9/23/2013 10/13/2013 11/2/2013 11/22/2013 12/12/20131/1/2014 1/21/20142/10/2014 -0.2 -0.4 -0.6 -0.8 -1 LG Motorola NEC Nokia Palm Pantech Samsung Sharp Sony Sprint T-Mobile ZTE

Consumer REported Delight (-1 to 1)

0.4

2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

Handset Brand Performance

1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 -0.2 -0.4 -0.6 -0.8 -1 8/14/2013 Samsung Apple Alcatel BlackBerry Casio HTC Huawei Kyocera LG Motorola NEC Nokia Palm Pantech Sharp Sony Sprint T-Mobile ZTE 9/3/2013 9/23/2013 10/13/2013 11/2/2013 11/22/2013 12/12/2013 1/1/2014 1/21/2014

It should be no surprise that Apple and Samsung led the race for mindshare. LG was the big surprise for this last analysis period garnering 3rd place in terms of buzz volume, though achieving around 25% of the volume of Apple or Samsung. Motorola knocked HTC from the top 4, indicating improvements to the market response to Motos handsets (especially the lower priced Moto G) and the waning popularity of the HTC one. Nokia remains a steady fifth position player though being nipped at by the floundering BlackBerry and the rising niche appeal of Sony. Within the remaining players, ZTE leads in buzz volume and is increasingly delighting users over prior weeks. Alcatel and Huawei have scattered performance as their volume of buzz is limited as they attempt to break into the major carriers on subscription handsets over pay as you go handsets. Kyocera has higher buzz than the other smaller OEMs but continues to disappoint what few engaged customers. While this analysis includes data from US, Canadian and UK carriers, we will be including other sources in the coming weeks, starting with China Unicom and expanding to other European and Asian carriers. This will allow for a more global trend analysis of mobile adoption. Argus Insights will also expand coverage from smartphones to include all handsets carried by carriers as we see increased interest in the pay as you go handsets. These traditionally lower end handsets are closing the experience gap with their more expensive cousins like the Galaxy S4 and LG G2. Increasingly seen as the first phone new subscribers will own, the customer experience will shape brand perceptions and buying habits of these new users for the rest of their lives, making it an important battle ground for the mobile industry, especially as the market reaches global saturation. Below you will find the mindshare performance of each of the handset manufacturers over the past twenty weeks. The final week is labeled with both the Delight level of the most recent week along with the volume of consumer buzz the brand received.

2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

0.80 5.00

1 0.5 0 0.61 167.00

Alcatel

LG

0
6/25/13 8/14/13 10/3/13 11/22/13 1/11/14 3/2/14

6/25/13

8/14/13

10/3/13

11/22/13

1/11/14

3/2/14

1 0.70 520.00

1 0.64 138.00

Motorol a

Apple

0
6/25/13 8/14/13 10/3/13 11/22/13 1/11/14 3/2/14

0
6/25/13 8/14/13 10/3/13 11/22/13 1/11/14 3/2/14

BlackBerry

Nokia

0.26 53.00 0
6/25/13 8/14/13 10/3/13 11/22/13 1/11/14

0.31 79.00 0
6/25/13 8/14/13 10/3/13 11/22/13 1/11/14

3/2/14

3/2/14

1 0.68 636.00

HTC
0.15 99.00
8/14/13 10/3/13 11/22/13 1/11/14 3/2/14

Samsung

0
6/25/13

0
6/25/13 8/14/13 10/3/13 11/22/13 1/11/14 3/2/14

Huawei

Sony

0.25 2.00 0
6/25/13 8/14/13 10/3/13 11/22/13 1/11/14

0.46 38.00 0

3/2/14

6/25/13

8/14/13

10/3/13

11/22/13

1/11/14

3/2/14

Kyocera

ZTE
0.25 16.00 0
6/25/13 8/14/13 10/3/13 11/22/13 1/11/14 3/2/14

0
6/25/13 8/14/13 10/3/13 11/22/13

1/11/14

0.04 12.00

3/2/14

2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

Which Handsets are Driving Consumer Demand?

Below are the detailed mindshare graphs of the top ten handsets in the data for this month. The rank is determined by a mix of the delight levels reported by users and the number of users feeling compelled to share their opinions. The iPhone 5S, while perceived slightly better than the Galaxy S4, loses out to the higher buzz of the Galaxy S4. It is interesting to note, that prior to the holidays, the iPhone 5S had a significant drop in both buzz and delight, indicating a large drop in demand for Apples flagship handset. Whereas the Galaxy S4 maintained strong delight levels throughout the holidays, and higher buzz, thanks to very intensive marketing by Samsung and aggressive promotions by carriers and retailers alike looking to stimulate demand before the holidays. The iPhone 5C, thanks to similarly aggressive pricing tactics has increased adoption but has also dropped to low delight levels. For the first time in months, a Motorola handset is in the top ten. The new low cost Moto G has succeed in grabbing mindshare from the aging but still popular LG G2 and HTC One. The aggressive holiday pricing for the Moto X pushed the mindshare for this Googlrola handset into the top ten. The Lumia 521 continues as the top Windows handset and the only one to break the top ten. The Google branded Nexus 5 continues to attract consumers looking for contract free handset options with the performance of flagship devices. Though waning, the Galaxy S3 continues to be an attractive alternative for smartphone customers similar to the iPhone 4S before it.
1 0.77 378.00 1 0.86 73.00

Motorola Moto G

0 6/25/2013 8/14/2013 10/3/2013 11/22/2013 1/11/2014 3/2/2014 1 0.78 352.00

0 6/25/2013 8/14/2013 10/3/2013 11/22/2013 1/11/2014 3/2/2014 1 0.77 110.00

0 6/25/2013 8/14/2013 10/3/2013 11/22/2013 1/11/2014 3/2/2014 1 0.76 108.00

0 6/25/2013 8/14/2013 10/3/2013 11/22/2013 1/11/2014 3/2/2014 1 0.65 119.00

0 0 6/25/2013 8/14/2013 10/3/2013 6/25/2013 8/14/2013 10/3/2013 11/22/2013 1/11/2014 3/2/2014 2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013 11/22/2013 1/11/2014 3/2/20148

Samsung Galaxy S IV Apple iPhone 5S LG G2 Apple iPhone 5C

0 6/25/2013 8/14/2013 10/3/2013 11/22/2013 1/11/2014 3/2/2014 1 0.55 60.00

0 6/25/2013 8/14/2013 10/3/2013 11/22/2013 1/11/2014 3/2/2014 1 0.69 45.00

Nokia Lumia 521

Samsung Galaxy Note 3

1 1

0 6/25/2013 8/14/2013 10/3/2013 11/22/2013 1/11/2014 3/2/2014

Google Nexus 5 Samsung Galaxy S III Motorola Moto X

0.44 68.00

0 6/25/2013 8/14/2013 10/3/2013 11/22/2013 1/11/2014 3/2/2014 0.79 38.00

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

What Is Driving Consumer Perception Of The Mobile Experience?

Within the consumer authored reviews is a wealth of insights as to what is driving delight and disappointment for mobile consumers. Argus Insights has developed and continuously curates attribute models of user experience. Different from surveys where analysis is limited to the questions being asked, this attribute analysis is able to see what is on top of minds for consumers. What is on top of consumer's minds is the best way to understand what is most important to mobile customers and how their perception of these topics shifts over time across brands, carriers and handsets. The analysis below details a summary analysis of all mobile reviews posted in the last 20 weeks. There are two views of the data, the Attribute Funnels which summarize the results by mindshare, showing the spread of negative, positive and neutral views for the top 20 most discussed mobile experience attributes, and Attribute Landscapes that plot how the Net Sentiment and Volume of Attribute Mentions have changed over the last 20 weeks. The Landscapes enable the assessment as to whether perceived battery life is improving or if more consumers are watching movies on their devices than before. The Attribute Funnels and Landscapes are broken into two sections. The first section pulls from all Experience Attributes, while the second section examples those Experience Attributes specifically related to handset usage scenarios such as making calls, use at school, etc.

Most Discussed Experience Attributes For The Past 20 Weeks

Product Passion figures large in the minds of consumers. This is a metric of extreme sentiment words such as Awesome, Terrible, Fantastic, Horrible, etc. This enables the comparison of how impassioned consumers are by their mobile devices. Battery Life looms large in the past 20 weeks coming in at number four, though still a net delight as some of the newer handsets are exceeding consumer expectations, the fact it is mentioned so often illustrates how critical power management is for consumers to fully utilize their handsets. Size/Weight along with exuberance about the screen demonstrate that the larger screens offered by most manufacturers are driving user delight. Issues with build quality and connectivity issues loom as the most net negative issues mentioned by consumers, outstripped only by frustrations in actually making phone calls.

Most Discussed Mobile Experience Attributes

-20% Product Passion Speed/Performance Usability Battery Size/Weight Display/Screen/Graphics Quality/Reliability Connectivity Price / Value Phone Functionality Camera Apps Style/Design Web Surfing Texting Features Operating System Stability Samsung Neg % Pos % Neut % -10% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

Looking at the same topics in the Attribute Landscape below, we see that the size and weight of new handsets are consistent delighters for new handsets. The Camera and Display are also significant delighters for consumers. This does not bode well for the Moto X as one of the most significant complaints for this handset has been the camera quality. Oddly, perceptions of Style and Design fell over the holidays, indicating how quickly flare ages in the hearts

2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

of users. Perceptions of Speed and Performance also took a dive over the holidays even as perceptions of Price/Value jumped. It could be that consumers purchased/received lower quality handsets for the holidays and although were overall happier with their new handset, a few key attributes fell.
60% Product Passion Usability 40% Speed/Performance Size/Weight Battery 0% Display/Screen/Graphics Style/Design -20% Camera Quality/Reliability -40% 8/14/2013 9/4/2013 9/25/2013 10/16/2013 11/6/2013 11/27/2013 12/18/2013 1/8/2014 Price / Value

Net Sentiment (% Positive - % Negative)

20%

Most Discussed Mobile Usage Scenarios

When the focus is narrowed to the more qualitative usage aspects of the experience, consumers share their perceptions of the handsets in operation. There are a few key usages where the handsets are falling short, most surprisingly in making Phone Calls and Basic Messaging.

Most Discussed Mobile Usage Scenarios and Attributes

-8% Phone Web Surfing Music Movies Photo Taking Home Gaming Family Resolution Significant Other Friends Messaging Email Social Media focus Work Location Car News/Weather/Sports Speed Work Neg % Pos % Neut % -6% -4% -2% 0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10%

2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

10

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

Movies and Gaming have the highest net sentiment of any of the Usage Scenarios tracked. While not mentioned as often as Phone Calls or Web Surfing, consumers consistently enjoy binge watching Netflix or killing time with Angry Birds. Using handsets to read books has dropped off significantly in the last year, especially with the increased availability of smaller screen tablets. When examining the top ten most discussed usage related Experience Attributes, the trends are relatively consistent over time until the holidays. Interestingly we see a drop in Gaming and mentions of Friends in the data indicating a demographic shift in the consumers reviewing their holiday gifts. This is coupled with an increase in both buzz and sentiment for Significant Others. This suggests that many spouses/boyfriends/girlfriends were reviewing new phones received as gifts.
80.0% 60.0% 40.0% 20.0% Phone Web Surfing Music Movies Home Gaming Family -40.0% Friends -60.0% Significant Other -80.0% 8/14/2013 9/3/2013 9/23/2013 10/13/2013 11/2/2013 11/22/2013 12/12/2013 1/1/2014 1/21/2014 Messaging

Axis Title

0.0% -20.0%

2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

11

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

How Are OEM Perceptions Shifting Moving Into 2014

The Brand Quadrants illustrate theperformance by major handset brands over the past month. The x-axis shows the volume of reviews from that carrier for that brand over the past month. The y-axis illustrates how well that brand met user expectations based on the review ratings for the past month. The trend arrow shows the change over the prior month. This allows the visualization of the shift in user expectations by Handset Brand.

Handset Manufacturers
0.8 0.7 Alcatel 0.6 Apple BlackBerry HTC 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 -0.1 1 10 100 1000 10000 Huawei Kyocera LG Motorola Nokia Samsung Sony ZTE

Brand Delight (-1 to 1)

0.5

Monthly Buzz Volume Most brands gained Buzz and Delight over the holiday season. Samsung is still receiving the most buzz of all the brands. Over half of the buzz for Samsung comes from the Galaxy S4. The same is true for Apple and the iPhone 5S. Given how much these flagship handsets drive brand perception, as the market perception of these phones begin to decay, new innovation is required to refresh the brand in the hearts and minds of consumers. Based on this evidence, it seems that Sony is poised to make a come back in the market as consumers have the highest average delight scores for Sony handsets, even over Apple iPhones. Motorola posted the largest gains overall in delight and you can see this translating into increased mindshare as well. Only BlackBerry showed a drop in consumer delight, highlighting what continues to be a struggle for this former market leader. BB10 has started to gain a niche following and the recent launch of BBM on competing operating systems has garnered BlackBerry additional brand awareness although not enough to arrest the slide in both mindshare and marketshare. Using the G2 as its reentry vehicle, LG has posted significant gains in mindshare over the last few months and now sits as the number 3 brand. Overall, leading up to the holidays, Argus Insights saw a significant slowdown in demand after the Black Friday promotions, signaling a clear saturation in the mobile market. It took herculean efforts by the carriers and their retail partners to move additional handsets over the holidays. At one point, retailers were offering the handsets launched just weeks earlier for free or for half of their retail costs in an effort to move excess inventory and pull forward upgraded subscription commitments for consumers into 2014.

2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

12

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

Which Carriers and Retailers Posted The Greatest Holiday Gains?

The Threat Quadrant view of Retailers shows much of who were the winners during the holiday season. Similar to the same chart for the handset brands, this graph compares the current months mindshare to the prior month by plotting the Carrier/Retailer Delight against the Buzz Volume. This allows the rapid assessment of how consumers perceive the handsets purchased from these retailers and how that influences their overall mobile experience.

Retailers
0.9 0.8 Walmart VodafoneUK Verizon TMobile Sprint Rogers 0.3 BestBuy 0.2 BellCA 0.1 0 1 10 100 1000 10000 Amazon ATT

Carrier/Retail Delight (-1 to 1)

0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4

Monthly Buzz Volume Immediately it is obvious that Best Buy has been dominating consumer conversations of their mobile experiences. Best Buy customers are routinely happier with the handset purchases than any other retailer. Only Bell Canada comes close. Sprint and Amazon both posted significant gains in both delight and buzz showing increased mindshare over the prior month. This indicates that Amazon is increasingly perceived as a competitive alternative for handset purchase to both carriers and Best Buy, this could reshape the landscape in the coming months. Walmart and T-Mobile both lost ground in December (Walmart mostly due to shifting their mobile storefront design to remove reviews from the purchase process). Verizon is mostly flat with a small decrease in buzz but increased delight while AT&T lost a bit of delight while buzz was flat. As a potential proxy for the battle for subscribers between the carriers, it would seem that Sprint may have started to gain a bit at the cost of T-Mobile while the constant war between AT&T and Verizon saw the front lines not budge at all. Rogers seems to have lost buzz at a greater rate than Bell Canada but picked up some happier customers in the process. It seems that that Best Buy, Amazon and Sprint were the big winners during the Holiday 2013, which has significant implications for the handset sales revenue the other carriers will report during the same period. It also suggests that the carriers could do well to leverage the lessons of Samsung and Microsoft by launching a store within a store within a retailer, like Best Buy or Staples, as a way to influence consumer purchase decisions. Given the wide availability of flagship handsets, the narrowing experience gap between the high end smartphones, and the pay as you go handsets, the carriers with a voice during the purchase process will be the ones able to shift consumer decisions.

2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

13

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

Visions of Purchase Intent within Social

When exploring handset brand mentions in social media such as Twitter and Facebook, a contrasting story emerges. The map below shows geo-located tweets by brand. Please note that Apple and Samsung related tweets are sampled due to the high volume whereas Argus Insights captures 100% of the other brands tweets. .These particular tweets are those tagged as representing a purchase event during the month of December. As you can see BlackBerry customers are a very vocal group within Twitter compared to other brands, an opportunity to help their recovery.

The chart below shows the same data as it changes over the holiday season. The volumes of Apple and Samsung have been corrected based on their sample sizes to allow for more direct comparison. Notice the large lift in both Apple and Samsung just before Christmas. This was the start of very aggressive retail pricing for flagship handsets. You see impact both on the pre holiday sales but also the post holiday celebration as consumers went to Twitter and Facebook to share their elation over their new mobile phone.

Social buzz volume tagged as purchase

1200000 1000000 800000 600000 400000 200000 0

Apple Phones

Blackberry Phones HTC Phones

LG Phones Motorola Phones Nokia Phones Samsung Phones

12/1/2013

12/3/2013

12/5/2013

12/7/2013

12/9/2013

1/2/2014

12/11/2013

12/13/2013

12/15/2013

12/17/2013

12/19/2013

12/21/2013

12/23/2013

12/25/2013

12/27/2013

12/29/2013

12/31/2013

1/4/2014

2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

14

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

NOTES:

2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

15

TM

Wh ere Mi n ds h ar e Mee ts Mark etSh are

If You Would Like To Dig Deeper

This is a shameless call to action that details, in brief, the goodies you would be able to access when you sign up for a full subscription. Other firms lock you into year long contracts for tools of unproven utility at ridiculous prices. We only ask for a small monthly payment to subscribe to our SaaS platform. You and your team will have access to all of the data used to develop this report as well as the same analytical tools used by Argus Insights on-demand, 24-7.

Finally A Social Analytics Platform That Offers Actionable Insights

The Argus Platform enables companies to use social media and user data to refine and launch effective marketing and innovation campaigns. By providing comprehensive and actionable consumer information and insights, Argus helps companies capture mind share.

How It Works
The Argus Platform is able to deliver actionable insights through three simple processes. Collect: The Argus Platform pulls together consumer conversations in social media sources like Twitter and consumer review sites. This data is unsolicited, unstructured, unfiltered, and real-time, which offers more thorough and unbiased insights. Additionally, Argus can integrate proprietary data sources such as surveys, help desk reports, and net promoter score questionnaires to offer fully comprehensive reporting. Analyze: The Argus Platform normalizes sentiment data across sources, and then compares consumer conversations to uncover reasons behind consumer trends. By connecting ongoing social conversations and metrics to campaigns, Argus is also able to predict near future sales growth (1-2 quarters out). Report: The Argus Platform reports results in simple and intuitive visualizations with downloadable PowerPoint-ready graphics from a dashboard customizable to the company's strategic questions.

Call today for free access to our demo account so you can evaluate for yourself the advantages Argus Insights can bring to your enterprise. +1-877-99-ARGUS
2011-2014Argus Insights, Inc. | www.argusinsights.com |sales@argusinsights.com | Dec 2013

16