A lot of that marketing could be the result of high market saturation: The recent poll shows that 86 percent of adults say they own a smartphone already. A plurality of smartphone owners (39 percent) said they own an Apple iPhone, 30 percent have a Samsung device and 14 percent have a device from LG, while other smartphone manufacturers such as Google and Motorola netted a total of 14 percent. When thinking about their next smartphone purchase, 38 percent said they are most likely to purchase an Apple device, 31 percent said Samsung and 8 percent said LG. The poll of smartphone owners has a margin of error of 2.3 percentage points.
The industry is forced to innovate its marketing approaches to keep sales and revenues growing, said Ben Arnold, senior director of innovation and trends at the Consumer Technology Association. Apple, for example, has seen iPhone sales plateau in recent years -- but the company has increased prices for the device, cushioning the impact on revenue numbers. In its fiscal fourth quarter report, released Nov.1, the company missed analysts’ expectation of 48.4 million iPhone sales, selling 46.9 million unit in the three-month period, according to Bloomberg data.
To excite consumers, manufacturers have to focus their marketing on the high-tech features that differentiate devices from one another, like facial recognition and other artificial intelligence tools, Arnold said.
“Although everyone is very focused on battery life, it’s not a super-exciting marketing point when you’re doing these great presentations,” he said. “Even though the specific specs around the camera as a buying motivation aren’t super high, it seems to get a lot of attention when new phones come out.”
But that doesn’t change the fact that consumers have baseline needs before purchasing a phone, Arnold said, which is why they tend to care more about practical features like battery life, durability and memory storage.
“If your phone doesn’t have battery life, that’s an everyday issue that you confront,” Arnold said. “You change your habits. You have to charge more often.”
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