Nine out of every ten iPhone users who upgrade their smartphone will stick with the ‌iPhone‌, a recent survey suggests.

trio iphones ios
Consumer Intelligence Research Partners surveyed 500 consumers in the U.S. who activated a new or used phone in the final three months of 2018 and found that 91 percent of iOS users upgraded to another ‌iPhone‌. Android users were also loyal, with 92 percent of respondents upgrading to another Android smartphone.

CIRP said loyalty for both iOS and Android has steadily increased, reaching the highest levels it has ever measured last quarter.

cirp ios loyalty q4 2018
"Loyalty hit the highest levels we've ever measured," said CIRP co-founder Mike Levin. "Learning a new operating system takes effort, so fewer and fewer customers have found the need to switch. This, coupled with the quality and reliability of new phones is likely contributing to the longer upgrade cycles we are witnessing."

Tag: CIRP

Top Rated Comments

vicviper789 Avatar
84 months ago
Loyalty in a walled garden where your purchases don’t transfer to the competing platform is hard to measure
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
timeconsumer Avatar
84 months ago

Consumer Intelligence Research Partners surveyed 500 consumers in the U.S.
Wow, they surveyed 500 people, great job! This isn’t enough data to determine anything.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
5105973 Avatar
84 months ago
Ya'll love complaining on these forums, yet none of us would never switch away from iPhones & Macs.
Oddly enough I don't complain that much here. When I do complain, I try not to make a rant out of it, but sometimes consumer frustration gets the better of me. But I'm in the process of switching over to a Pixel 3XL as my main phone. And it's not an act of petulance or frustration. There are just some little extras I'm enjoying on it for now. I refuse to burn any bridges because I fully embrace the possibility of doing the opposite at some time in the future.

I don't think Apple designers and engineers are sitting on their thumbs. We were told 2018 was the year of bug fixes and 2019 we'd get new goodies for the OS. My iPhone Xr will be waiting for them. I'm very excited about new iPad Mini rumors.

I did go for a Windows PC over a Mac desktop when the time came to make a choice. It was the most practical choice for my purposes.

While emotions are unavoidable when hard earned money is involved in these choices, I do think some people need to step away from identifying themselves as "Team Apple" or "Team Android". The competition between these companies makes them try harder and so blind loyalty to a brand is not in our best interests as consumers. Neither is blind hatred and anger, which I admit I do sometimes succumb to on a bad day, myself. That's only caused me to make stupid decisions that my wallet regrets! ;)

All of the options come with such a surprising array of benefits...and some of the most boneheaded, frustrating flaws imaginable. It's quite the eye opener to try a little bit of everything.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
otternonsense Avatar
84 months ago
I wonder what the results would be if they had included consumers outside of the US.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
5105973 Avatar
84 months ago
Loyalty, blurgh. I’m loyal to people and ideals. For iPhones I’m just a repeat customer until they design and sell something I can’t or won’t want to buy.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Tinmania Avatar
84 months ago
Ya'll love complaining on these forums, yet none of us would never switch away from iPhones & Macs.
Not so fast. I just switched back to a Windows PC, from a mac, as my main PC for the first time since 2011. I only bought it due to it being on a doorbuster sale at Best Buy. For $539 it is a gaming mini desktop with a dedicated Radeon RX580 GPU, Ryzen 5 CPU, and both a 128GB NVMe boot drive and a 1TB spinner. The included 8GB RAM was easily extended to 16GB for $55. It boots in less than 10 seconds.

The thing actually drives an Oculus Rift, quite acceptably, and it is for Rift that I bought this PC. But after spending time with it, and the latest Windows 10, I realized I could very easily use this as my main PC.

That said I can't see myself going back to Android, for my phone.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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