SPB Survey 2010 Results announced

SPB Software has announced the results of the seventh annual SPB Survey. This year the survey was held from November 18th till December 7th and aimed to give an overview of the latest mobile market trends, while helping in identifying changes in user profiles, mobile device expectations and the typical handset use cases. The most discussed and controversial issues in 2010 were picked to be included in the survey. The highly respected mobile market analysts Distimo and MobileSQUARED were involved in the work on the survey questions.

With the help of famous online magazines (All About Symbian, zd.net, Nokia Experts, Mobile Zeitgeist, Mobility Minded) and SPB partners from Smartphone Experts, the number of survey participants has significantly increased since the previous year and reached a total of 15000.

Some changes were made in the structure of the survey according to the changes on the mobile market. More attention was paid to the platform preferences, software download, price and demand for the tablet devices. Some of the results were really surprising and curious. Based on the analysis of all responses SPB Software presents the short overview of the most interesting discoveries.

Is the platform important? iPhone vs Android. The users have chosen the most popular platform

Platform is really important for the users today (91% of respondents confirmed this).

Android, Bada, Blackberry, Feature Phone, Symbian and Windows Mobile users would choose Android platform buying the next device. Surprisingly, iOS is the most preferred platform only among the iPhone users. iOS, Maemo, Palm and Windows Phone 7 users would choose their platforms.

Android, Bada, BlackBerry, iOS and Windows Mobile users choose Symbian OS as the platform that they would less likely have. Symbian users consider Windows Mobile to be such a platform. iOS is less preferred by Palm and Windows Phone 7 users. Feature phone users wouldn’t buy a feature phone as their next device. This shows that smartphones will replace feature phones in the near future.

We also see the difference between user preferences when it comes to platform choice. Functionality, apps quality, app store and design are most valued in iOS. Availibility of free apps and widgets are liked mostly by Android users. The devices availability on the market is most valued by Symbian users. bada users like the price of their devices and Palm users - simplicity.

How much are the users ready to pay for the apps they are using?

Survey participants would prefer the paid software (53%) to free software with ads (47%). However, it differs a lot depending on the country and, as we said before, platform. In Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States of America the users would rather pay for the software. In China, Czech Republic, India, Spain, Brazil, Ukraine, Portugal, Taiwan and Argentina they are most likely to download it for free. Android, Symbian and Feature phone users claim that they would prefer to download apps for free with ad support.

The users choose maps and GPS (72%), weather (62%) and browsers/Internet utilities (62%) as necessary software to have on the device. However it's a common assumption, that software should be cheap, only games showed quite low price, when we asked users, how much they prefer to pay for applications. The users would pay for games and fun software if it costs less than $5. But when it comes to serious things, they would pay more (up to $10-20) for backup, maps and GPS, improvement for UI and Usability, dictionary and business (e-mail client, text editor, etc) applications.

On average users download around 2-5 apps per month. Maemo (6 apps), Android (6 apps) and iOS (5 apps) users download more apps than others. Software is mostly downloaded from developer's website or on-device Application Store. BlackBerry (4 apps) and Windows Mobile (3 apps) users download less than users with devices on other platforms.

Is there a need for tablets?

32% of the smartphone users that have taken part in our survey, have already used the tablet device. Among those who have used a tablet before 34% are going to buy it. Those who haven't used it are more skeptical: 67% of them are not going to buy it. The majority of participants believe that the use of a tablet device won’t significantly reduce the need for an advanced smartphone.

The full SPB Survey 2010 report can be found here: http://spb.com/press/spb-survey-2010

Three randomly chosen SPB Survey participants are already chosen to receive valuable "thank you" gifts from SPB Software. They have received the email with the instructions on how to get their prize.