Customers remain loyal to Galaxy brand

By Kim Tae-gyu

Global customers appear to be remaining loyal to the Galaxy brand of Samsung Electronics despite the recent issue of “exploding” batteries of the Galaxy Note 7 released last month.

Android Police, a blog dedicated to news on Google’s mobile OS, started a poll Sept. 4 to learn how Samsung’s recall of 2.5 million Note 7s a few days ago changed people’s perception of the Samsung brand and its smartphones.

Out of around 12,000 respondents up to Monday, 39 percent said that the recall has not affected their trust of the Samsung brand while 36 percent said that their trust has increased because of the company’s swiftness and effectiveness in addressing the potential defect.

Twenty-four percent said that recent incidents prompted them to feel somewhat less trusting of Samsung smartphones or greatly diminished their trust.

Samsung released the Galaxy Note 7, Aug. 19, in 10 countries including the United States and Korea but announced a global recall Sept. 2 due to claims of batteries catching fire while charging.

Once the costly fix of offering a new Galaxy Note 7 to those who have already bought one is completed, Samsung is expected to continue marketing the large-screen devices beginning late this month or early next month.

Over the past few days, regulators of multiple governments advised Galaxy Note 7 owners to turn off the devices and stop charging or using them but such strong measures don’t seem to have seriously harmed the Galaxy brand image yet, local watchers said.

“Readers of Android Police are mostly in favor of Android phones. Hence, I think that they do not have big incentives to shift to Apple’s recently released iPhone 7,” an analyst in Seoul said.

“Still, the results show that loyalty to Samsung is pretty strong in spite of all the mishaps with regard to the battery issue. It remains to be seen how things will evolve in the future.”

Apple introduced the iPhone 7 last week but the U.S. company did not disclose preorders, which made it difficult to check early responses of end customers.

GSM Arena, which provides news about mobile devices, also began a poll Sept. 3 asking its readers whether they would wait for the Galaxy Note 7 to return.

Out of about 7,500 respondents, 63 percent answered positively while the remaining 37 percent said they would jump ship to other brands.

SamMobile, a news-sharing community for Samsung customers, also carried out a survey Monday to gauge the ripple effect of the Note 7 recall.

Around 3,000 responded and 45 percent said they were not concerned because recalls happen in all industries.

Up to 39 percent said they appreciate how the company has handled it while 16 percent said they will not buy a Samsung product again.