New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/08/2012 -- October is here, and that signals the arrival of Piplzchoice quarterly smartphone Customer Experience report. The past reports are available upon request.

Here are a few words of explanation of the methodology used to produce this report:

We interpret and measure "Customer Experience" according to a definition and understanding articulated by Forrester Research analysts as "how customers perceive their interactions with your company.” However, we expand it further to "your brand" and "your product" to make the measurements more actionable by branding and product management.

We do not conduct any surveys, pose any questions, or contact any customers in any form or shape. That also means that no assumptions or keywords are constructed by Amplified Analytics personnel to produce this report. The information published here is based on proprietary, automated Opinion Mining of unsolicited and customer-generated description of their experience with specific smartphone models.

We start with a view of a "universe" of 355 smartphone models described by 108,963 customers. We then focus on smartphones that have been reviewed during the last 3 months (39 models).

Opinion Miner® software discovers specific attributes of customer experiences with these smartphones and measures the customers’ sentiments for each attribute.

This is not a "buzz" sentiment monitoring exercise, as we ignore any content that cannot be reasonably attributed to experience of a paying customer. More on the methodology can be found here.

Spotlight on Brand

A share of customer reviews illustrates a level of their engagement with a brand and correlates with dynamics of their market share performance. The chart below shows a share of customer engagement with the smartphone brands during the third quarter of 2012.

As predicted in the last two reports, HTC’s share of engagement had finally come down as the Thunderbolt customers stopped describing their experiences with the long-obsolete model. Apple’s share of attention will likely rise substantially in the fourth quarter since the slow delivery of iPhone 5 has just started to produce a trickle of their customer reviews.

The big winner of customer share of attention this quarter is the Samsung at 39%. However, it is not a surprise, as its engagement with customers was growing consistently for each period on which we reported. The only other brand that shows consistent increase, albeit on a much smaller scale, is Nokia (6%).

The Average Customer Satisfaction per Brand paints a picture that is quite different from the results of most popular surveys that were published in a recent past. We calculated the average Customer Satisfaction of a Brand by averaging Customer Satisfaction scores of each model that belongs to the Brand.

This approach highlights how specific models can impact overall Customer Perception of a Brand. A wide range of Customer Satisfaction scores with Samsung models, from Galaxy Note=1.47 to Intercept=0.88, is responsible for lowering the Brand average. I think our approach provides better guidance for proactive Category/Brand decision management.

Spotlight on Operating Systems

Android keeps dominating the share of Customer Engagement, but Windows OS’ slice of the pie continues to grow.

The trending picture below shows the surprisingly consistent increase in Customer's engagement with Windows OS from quarter to quarter. This is the first period WP Customers "out" reviewed the Apple Customers by 83%.

The rate of engagement correlates to a high level of Customer Satisfaction, as Windows-powered smartphones are locked in a statistical tie with Apple iPhones as five out of ten most popular models are Windows phones from different manufacturers.

It will be interesting to see how the inflow of iPhone 5 customer reviews impact that battle.

It is worth repeating that these scores reflect aggregate, average satisfaction with the phones and not with their operating systems. Let me know if you need the detail view of Customer Satisfaction with operating systems themselves.

Spotlight on Smartphone Models

Samsung Droid Charge Customers generated the largest number of reviews at 2,084 of all smartphones reviewed during this quarter. The latest arrival, Apple iPhone 5, understandably has the smallest number at 56. I expect it to change dramatically during the last quarter of 2012.

The complete list of all models included in this report can be found here.

This quarter, the HTC Radar smartphone came with the top general satisfaction score of 1.78, exceeding its customers expectations by 78% (N=406). Another HTC Window phone, Titan II (CSAT=1.69/N=83), and HTC Amaze 4G (CSAT=1.56/N=208) were the closest contenders. That is a sweep for HTC. The cellar is occupied by Blackberry Bold 9900 (CSAT=0.69/N=84), LG Cosmos (CSAT=0.76/N=644), and Samsung Intercept (CSAT=0.87/N=441). Both Intercept and Cosmos have been on the bottom for the last three quarters, and I wonder why the brands managers continue to allow the overall equity erosion to perpetuate.

In the previous installments of this report, I have presented a detailed account of Customer Experience measurements for selected models. Since the volumes of information become too large for this format, and a level of the readers' interest in the details is not clear, I will conclude the analysis here. The detailed comparison of specific smartphone models for personal use can be found by following this link. If you are interested in SmartPhone, or other market's, Customer Experience Measurement (CXm) dashboard implementation, please email to me directly.