Well this is a bit odd. J.D. Power came out with the results of its 2013 Tablet Satisfaction Study and published a press release with the headline: "Samsung Ranks Highest in Owner Satisfaction with Tablet Devices". When looking closely at the numbers provided in the study though, it doesn't look like Samsung ranked highest at all.
The survey results indicate that for the first time, Samsung received the highest ranking for satisfaction among all other tablet makers including Apple. The final scores on a 1,000-point scale were 835 for Samsung and 833 for Apple, but J.D. Power doesn't indicate in much detail how it specifically gets to those numbers. Now for the weird part. On a chart where the numbers are broken down, it looks pretty obvious that Apple actually tops satisfaction, not Samsung.
With tablet ratings broken down into five categories — performance, ease of use, physical design, tablet features, and cost — Apple scores a perfect five out of five in four of the categories. Under cost, it scores two out of five, for a grand total of 22 stars. Samsung scores only 18 stars across the same categories. In fact, the only category Samsung comes out ahead of Apple in is cost, where it receives two more stars. The weight of cost in the survey is only 16 percent. Obviously that's not giving Samsung the boost it'd need to logically score highest, so what is?
Are there components of the study in favor of Samsung that simply aren't being publicly released? Did Samsung somehow get J.D. Power to bend the truth a bit? There's quite a few questions at this point, but one thing is clear: based on the information given, Samsung did not rank higher than Apple in tablet customer satisfaction as J.D. Power claims.
Source: Fortune | Image via J.D. Power
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