Despite its shrinking sales and job cuts, Taiwan-based HTC Corp (宏達電) hit a high note in Japan’s customer satisfaction ranking, beating most other Android phone makers, including Samsung Electronics Co.
The ranking, released on Friday by Oricon Inc, showed Apple Inc had the highest satisfaction rating in Japan’s smartphone market, with an overall score of 72.85 points, followed by Sony Mobile at 71.36 points, Fujitsu Ltd 69.47 at, HTC at 69.19, Samsung at 68.77, Sharp Corp at 68.69, LG Electronics Inc at 67.16 and Kyocera Corp at 66.65.
Oricon surveyed a total of 12 smartphone makers that sold products in Japan in 2013 and last year. The survey, which received 18,847 valid samples, is based on seven categories: quality of connection, product operability, design, performance, camera functions, integrity of features and company reliability.
Apple ranked seventh in the integrity of features category, but ranked first in the remaining six categories.
HTC ranked second in both the integrity of features and product operability categories and third in design, with lower rankings in product performance (fifth), camera functions (sixth), reliability of company (sixth) and quality of connection (eighth).
However, HTC’s high customer satisfaction did not translate into actual sales in Japan, where the Taiwanese firm failed to rank among the top five smartphone makers in the second quarter of this year.
According to an Aug. 27 report published by IDC Japan, Apple had a dominant 39.1 percent share of Japan’s smartphone market in the April-June quarter, ahead of Sony Mobile’s 14.9 percent, Sharp’s 13.2 percent, Samsung’s 12 percent and Fujitsu’s 7.6 percent.
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