How Does Apple's iPhone Loyalty Compare To Samsung And Google?

Apple Inc. AAPL shares traded higher on Wednesday despite the company missing consensus analyst expectations for iPhone revenue in its fiscal third quarter. The iPhone revenue miss comes after BankMyCell reported earlier this month that iPhone customer loyalty rates have dropped to their lowest level since 2011 ahead of the critical 5G phone cycle expected in 2020.

This week, BankMyCell issued a follow-up report on customer loyalty rates among Apple competitors Alphabet, Inc. GOOG GOOGL and Samsung Electronics. BankMyCell found that, while iPhone loyalty may be dropping, it's still the gold standard among device makers.

Digging Deeper

BankMyCell looked at data from 64,273 smartphone users to determine what percentage of users trading in their phones remained loyal to their current brand.

Apple’s brand loyalty dropped to 73%, down 18 percentage points from last year to its lowest level in eight years.

While that trend is certainly troubling for Apple investors, Samsung and Google’s numbers are somewhat reassuring. Samsung’s loyalty rate is 63.9%, while Google’s loyalty rate is 51%. No other major device maker has loyalty rates above 41%.

The survey found that a little more than half (50.8%) of iPhone users that changed brands switched to Samsung devices. At the same time, 47% of Samsung defectors switched to iPhones. Samsung was also the most popular brand among users switching from Google, LG, Motorola and HTC phones as well.

Apple may be the most valuable smartphone maker by market cap, but it's far from the global market share leader. As of the first quarter of 2019, Samsung had the largest global share at 21% followed by Huawei at 17%, Apple at 12% and Xiaomi and Oppo at 8%, according to Counterpoint.

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