Edible Apple

In a relatively short amount of time, Android has emerged as a potent competitor to the iPhone. Indeed, Google and its partners have done a tremendous job marketing and getting competitive Android devices into the marketplace. Famously, Google executives have touted that over 500,000 Android devices are activated every single day.

That’s certainly impressive, even if the number is inflated as some have suggested – but attracting millions of users isn’t the be-all-end-all if those users don’t become loyal customers.

In a recent survey of 515 smartphone owners, USB found that the iPhone stands alone when it comes to customer retention. Specifically, the iPhone has a retention rate of 89% while the second place entrant, HTC, is miles behind with a scant retention rate of 39%. Samsung smartphones, meanwhile have a retention rate of 28%. Taken together, Android smartphones have a retention rate of 55%, still significantly behind Apple.

Now we don’t want to read too much into this survey given its small sample size, but it’s still a point worthy of discussion. And as an aside, why would USB, given all of its resources, limit its study to just 515 participants? That’s weak sauce and arguably shoddy work.

In any event, onto the chart o’ the day.

And in the chart below we see that more than 50% of respondents looking to move to a new handset are eyeing the iPhone with most of these potential new customers being former RIM and Nokia users. Also of note here is that both Samsung and HTC will both be gaining just slightly more customers than they’ll be losing.

And yet another chart for your viewing enjoyment after the break.