Research reveals 57% of smartphone users disappointed with handset and application performance

Closer examination reveals that only 155 members of the public responded to the survey.

One interesting “key finding” that I noted was that whether a problem with the device or the network, 53% blame the device for the issue. If Apple’s true intent is to control the quality user experience by keeping the ecosystem closed, this finding supports that strategy. However, it also makes them more legitimately responsible with issues do arise.

Little mention of apps being blamed for the issues

There is no commentary on the quality of the mobile apps themselves being blamed for issues with the phones, but I suspect that a user who has run into a large number of poorly written apps is going to attribute the problems with the apps back to the phone itself. This is unfortunate, because the turnover of applications on a mobile device is much more frequent than on a desktop. When there are a large number of apps available for free or $0.99, the barrier to installation of the app is extremely low.

I, myself, used to download many applications on my PCs, but they were either open source applications from SourceForge or shareware that I had to try and make a conscious decision to pay money for. I doubt that a significant percentage of the PC owners did likewise and I’m pretty sure most of the ones I know that did had malware on their machines as a result of installing something that they really shouldn’t have. In contrast, half of iPhone users buy at least an app a month.

With such application development and installation churn comes increased instability, no matter how tightly the ecosystem is controlled.