iPhone, OnePlus or Samsung: Who will win the smartphone race this festive season?

YouGov BrandIndex shows that all three brands have a strong chance of wooing consumers this festive season

With the festive season around the corner, it’s raining smartphones in the market. Some of the biggest players have launched the most anticipated phones of the year to kick-off the celebrations. To add to this, Amazon and Flipkart’s online festive sales further present opportunities for those looking to grab their favourite handsets. YouGov looks into the brand perceptions of the 14 smartphone brands that it tracks to see which brand among the newly launched premium phones stands the best chance to win this festive season.

Data from YouGov BrandIndex- a daily brand health tracker, shows that as of now iPhone is the buzziest phone among Indians, with a Buzz score of 28.5 points in September 2019. This comes as no surprise as the smartphone giant recently launched the new iPhone 11, hitting the price-conscious consumers. The phone got sold out online even before its official launch and has created a lot of positive buzz for the brand.

However, the iPhone faces competition from its arch-rivals- Samsung and OnePlus as these brands are creating a lot of buzz as well. OnePlus has generated a lot of chatter around the launch of its 7T model and Samsung is driving the buzz around the launch of its foldable phone in India.

For the same time period, even Recommend score (whether one would recommend a brand to others) for these brands is high. It is interesting to note, that for females, iPhone is the most recommended brand while Samsung is on top for males. In both cases, OnePlus is second in the list of most recommended smartphone brands.

However, when judging the perception of Quality (whether one considers a brand is of good or poor quality) among smartphones, we see that iPhone is on top with a Quality score of 37.2, followed by Samsung (32.0) and OnePlus (29.4), indicating that consumers feel iPhone is of better quality than the others.

Even though all three brands score high on various brand health metrics, when it comes to people who are in the market to buy a phone, Samsung scores the highest on Consideration which measures whether one would consider purchasing a brand. This is an important metric in determining the purchase behaviour of a customer and his likeliness to buy. Samsung leads in this area and is ahead of iPhone and OnePlus. Furthermore, even Purchase intent for Samsung which measures whether one would buy from the brand is also high amongst both consumer sets- male and female, suggesting that Samsung has a higher likelihood of being the consumer’s pick this season as compared to its competitors.

With Flipkart and Amazon offering discounts on smartphones as part of the biggest ongoing online sales, these brands are in the ring to fight it out for the top spot. YouGov BrandIndex will continue to track these brands to see the impact of these events on consumers’ perception and purchase behaviour.

Note to Editors- All data has been collected from 1^st July to 19^th September 2019 on YouGov’s daily brand tracking tool- BrandIndex