Influential customer satisfaction research firm J.D. Power today announced that Apple's iPhone has topped the list of smartphones for the fourth straight year in its new 2010 U.S. Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study - Volume 2.
For a fourth consecutive time, Apple ranks highest in customer satisfaction among manufacturers of smartphones with a score of 800 on a 1,000-point scale, and performs particularly well in ease of operation, operating system, features and physical design. Motorola (791) and HTC (781) follow Apple in the rankings.
Among other interesting items of note gathered in the survey, conducted from January through June of this year, are revelations that customers are tending to keep their handsets longer between upgrades while monthly service fees continue to rise as more customers add data packages to their plans. Citing economic conditions for at least part of the reason why customers have been holding back on upgrading their handsets, the study now finds that customers hang onto their handsets for an average of 20.5 months.
