Survey: Apple’s iPhone grabs 3 times as many Samsung owners

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A new survey of iPhone and Samsung buyers includes both confirmation of what we suspected, as well as a few surprises. Topping the list: 20 percent of new iPhone owners previously used an Android smartphone, or one out of each five iPhone owners.

The South Korean Android handset wasn’t capable of doing much damage to Apple, however – just seven percent of new Samsung owners switched from the iPhone. Overall, Apple does well at retaining iPhone owners, its largest group of buyers having owned a previous version of the smartphone.

For Samsung, its strength is in attracting other Android handset owners and first-time smartphone buyers, according to the survey released Monday…

The survey by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) measured smartphone buyers between July 2012 and June 2013. Both handsets did equally well at retaining their core customer base – previous iPhone owners for Apple, Android owners for Samsung, according to Fortune.

In terms of taking a bite from each others customers, Apple took 33 percent of Samsung customers, while the Android player enticed just eleven percent from Apple. In other words, Apple is gaining three times more customers from Samsung than Samsung is stealing buyers from Apple.

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The finding reinforced previous reports which showed the brand loyalty of iPhone customers. As the Apple-Samsung smartphone duopoly continues, which third-tier companies are falling victim? The iPhone is attracting former BlackBerry owners, while Samsung is drawing in HTC, Motorola and Nokia owners, according to CIRP.

The survey also suggests Samsung’s attempts to cast the iPhone as last year’s technology increasingly adopted by your parents just isn’t ringing true with smartphone buyers: the CIRP data found iPhone owners to be younger, wealthier and more-educated than Samsung purchasers.