Apple Is Making Its Competitors Look Like Pilot Projects [ANALYSIS]

Raymond James equity research has conducted another survey within the smartphone industry in the U.S., and has come up with some shocking analysis results. Apparently, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) devices are too popular, in the sense that, when compared to its competitors’ devices, they make them look like nothing but Work In Progress projects.

In fact, you would be left wondering whether the competitors are really serious, or they are just running pilot projects in precedence to the main products. I mean, how can a company which has been in operation for years, come up with a device, launch it to the public, only to realize later that, less than 50%, or even at some points 30%, know that it exists? Compare this to Apple’s outstanding results of more than 90%; then you will be able to see that its is like comparing a prototype and a  finished product.

In smartphone  ownership, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) leads the charts with its iPhone devices, at 43.3%, while Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (LON:BC94), and other android phones share 44.7%. However, this statistic also indicates that Android O.S leads the charts, as compared to iOS. The rest of the smartphones look a lot more like something that belong to the “others category”.

Nonetheless, Android based smartphones will soon be slipping down, as a very high number of customers (56% of the users surveyed) are looking to purchase an iPhone, as their next smartphone, as compared to Android’s 38.6%. Only BlackBerry, from the chasing pack comes close, with only 2.8% of the population indicating that they would be acquiring a new BlackBerry phone as their next smartphone.

Apple’s iPhone 5 buyers will include approximately 11.9% of the existing iPhone owners, upgrading to the new device, while 34.2% plan to stick with their current models. Additionally, iPhone 5 buyers will also include 14.5% of people who currently do not own an iPhone, indicating a shift from competitors, and other low-end devices.

Only 2.9% of the population said they would like to purchase a Windows Phone 8 device  by the year’s end, which represents the Nokia Lumia 920 and HTC Corp (TPE:2498) devices. This indicates that at least 26% of the population would be purchasing the new iPhone 5, by the year’s end, which is quite a mountain, when put on the same scale with Windows Phone 8 devices.

It would be saddening for some of the industry players, who launched their devices recently, if the survey statistics by Raymond James Research are anything to go by. A majority of the recently launched devices attracted less than 50% awareness of the market.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s new surface tablet and Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK)’s new smart phone could only manage about 29% awareness, while Microsoft Windows Phone 8, was pegged at 41.8%.

The only other device to hit an awareness ratio of more than 50%, apart from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iPhone 5, was the new Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s Kindle Fire tablets, at 70.5%. Nonetheless, this was by no means close to iPhone 5’s awareness of 92.7%.

The newly launched devices were also put to another test, with a question assessing the likelihood of customers to purchase a particular device, during the current holiday season. Only iPhone 5 could hit anything above 10%, as it recorded that 12% of the people were likely to purchase the device, while 23% are somewhat likely.

The new iPad 9.7″, launched earlier this year, attracted 5.6% of likely purchases, with 19.1% somewhat likely to purchase. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) was the closest challenger to the Apple family of iDevices, as it attracted 4.2% of likely purchases, and 8.6% of the somewhat likely purchases, beating Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s soon to be launched new iPad 7″ mini device, which slotted home 3.9% likely purchases and 14.6% of somewhat likely purchases.

The new iPhone 5 therefore garnered approximately 35.2% positive feedback, while the new iPad 9.7″, and iPad 7″ mini, garnered a total of 24.7% and 18.5% positive feedback respectively. Amazon Kindle Fire tablets came in first overall from the rest of the pack, at 16.8% positive feedback.