Can Apple make a Come Back ?

Apple has a major opportunity to invade Samsung’s turf

For the past couple of years, Samsung has been aggressively making moves to erode Apple’s market share in both smartphones and tablets by pumping out huge volumes of gadgets every year that have sold well in both established and emerging markets. Apple, meanwhile, has maintained strong sales in core markets such as the United States and Japan but hasn’t made a lot of waves in emerging markets where consumers don’t want to shell out top dollar for their gadgets.

However, a new survey conducted by mobile marketing firm Upstream and research firm Ovum suggests that Apple has a big opportunity to steal away some of Samsung’s customers in emerging markets in the coming years if it plays its cards right. The two firms surveyed more than 4,500 consumers in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Vietnam and found that Apple is now the most coveted brand in these key markets. One year ago, a similar survey conducted by Upstream had found that Samsung was the most coveted brand in these markets while Apple lagged behind in third place after Nokia.

This year, however, Apple has plowed ahead of both Samsung and Nokia as the most coveted brand, although its gains have mostly been at the expense of Nokia, which saw the percentage of consumers listing it as their most desired brand plummet from 22% last year to 13% this year. Samsung, meanwhile, held relatively steady as 29% of consumers surveyed said it was their most desired brand this year, down only slightly from the 32% who said the same last year.

The best news for Apple in the survey is that it fared very well in China, where 42% of consumers surveyed named it as their most coveted brand, a full 10 percentage points higher than the 32% who named Samsung as the brand they coveted most.

Source: http://bgr.com