Symbian Blog

During the Autumn I worked with China word-of-mouth experts CIC to produce some comparative data on online responses to smartphones – we were particualrly interested in non-Symbian phones so there is no Symbian data in the study note we will publish this week. Here are some of the findings.

Apple’s decision not to launch the iPhone until late in 2009 in China has had the effect of creating a strong market for black market sales since 2007, but it has also allowed competitors to establish the unique character of their offers – with the G1, for example, earning the role of “business phone” and the iPhone relegated to “entertainment” phone.

iPhone buzz was strong throughout 2009 in China as were black market sales of iPhones. Analysts who predict strong iPhone sales for 2010 ignore ignore the fact that sales have already been strong on the black market and may now be in decline following poor launch sales at China Unicom (5,000 subscribers in the first 4 days).

It begs the question: Has going legal dampened enthusiasm? The iPhone outperformed all other phones in terms of web opinion and interest in the West earlier this year receiving 12 times more mentions than the HTC G1 at the time of the G1 launch.

In China, BEFORE its launch, the iPhone played out well against the Pre, G1 and RIM at least equaling their online buzz at around 8% of online buzz.

However, this is considerably improved performance by the G1 than in English language markets. The Palm Pre is similarly better appreciated, relative to the iPhone, in China than in English language markets as reflected by online commentary, roughly equaling the iPhone’s online buzz in China whereas in the English language the Pre came a distant third to the G1.