Apple has the world's second most loyal users — after Netflix

Apple and Netflix logos

A study of brand loyalty claims that Apple users are enormously more loyal that Samsung owners, but they're both easily beaten by Netflix.

It's previously been claimed by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), that Apple has the most loyal smartphone customers in the US, and that it's better at getting people to switch from Android. Now, though, a global survey of brand loyalty says Samsung is 24th on the list, Apple is 2nd, and Netflix is 1st.

"When it comes to brand loyalty, Samsung beats Apple on awareness, with scores of 1.01 and 0.82 respectively," say researchers at British energy, technology, and legal firm Bionic. "But when it comes to reputation and impression, Apple ranks significantly higher than its Korean competitor, who falls short especially on brand stability with a score of only 1.15 compared to Apple's 2.62."

Bionic's methodology comprised analysing data from UK polling firm YouGov, plus search demand and social media statistics. It also focused only on what it describes as household name companies.

That means for a chiefly business to business firm, it chose to explore only consumer loyalty. Then despite its claims of tracking global brand loyalty, the results include names such as John Lewis, Debenhams, and Sainsbury's that are comparatively little known outside the UK.

"[A] recent [unnamed] study showing that 92.6% of iPhone users plan to stick with Apple for their next phone, which is compared to only 74.6% of Samsung users," says Bionic. "64% of iPhone users have stated that they are highly unlikely to switch to another phone brand in the future."

Bionic ascribes this to "Apple's brand image, quality, reliability, and customer service."

Apple is still beaten by Netflix, which Bionic says "unsurprisingly ranks highly... [in] brand awareness with a score of 0.79, loyalty at 2.98, impression at 4.35 and reputation at 3.62."

"This combined with social media and Google search analysis gave Netflix the highest ranking score of 78.57 out of 100," it concludes.

Apart from saying Samsung comes 24th in the list of brands with the most loyal users, Bionic only lists a top 20. There are three technology firms in that list with Apple at number 2, Amazon at number 3, and Microsoft at number 11.

Recently, a US-based survey from Statista, Apple edged out Samsung for loyalty, but few Google Pixel owners responded, and 57% said they were likely to switch.