About 57 percent of smartphone users are disappointed with the overall performance of their smartphone, with streaming media, Web browsers and social networking applications causing the most problems according to Fanfare (News - Alert), which conducted a survey of 155 smartphone users in January and February 2010.

 

Given the growing smartphone sophistication and complexity, as well as the resulting irritation factor when a user has trouble getting any new consumer electronics product to work, these findings perhaps are not surprising. 

 

About 29 percent experienced “continual” problems with newly acquired applications, and 64 percent required some form of software patching to fix issues on their smartphone, the survey found. 

 

About 52 percent reported they “sometimes” encounter glitches, compatibility issues, crashing or freezing when using their smartphones. 

 

About 71 percent report issues using Web browsers, 65 percent report streaming media issues and 67 percent report social media application issues. 

 

Though 55 percent of respondents cannot tell whether individual problems stem from the handset or the mobile network, 53 percent instinctively blame the smartphone manufacturer whenever an issue arises. 

 

That might become a bigger issue if sales of “unlocked” phones become more common in the U.S. market. Service providers in loosely-coupled value systems often say they expect to be the company that gets called when something doesn't work, even when it might not be a network problem.

 

The Fanfare study suggests a similar problem might await device manufacturers if any significant number of users start buying unlocked phones. Google (News - Alert) encountered at least some of these problems when it launched its Nexus One phones. 

 

So what is the churn potential for a service provider when a user starts to encounter smartphone issues? 

 

About eight percent of respondents said they would consider switching service providers if they encountered “just one” problem. About 14 percent suggested they might consider switching if problems happened “rarely.” 

 

Another 18 percent suggested they would consider switching providers if problems happened “occasionally.” 

 

Altogether, that suggests churn potential of up to 40 percent for smartphone issues that happen as infrequently as “once” to “occasionally.”

 

One has to take such findings with a grain of salt, of course. Consumers often do not behave as they claim they will. And there are barriers to switching when users are on contracts or buy bundled services that offer financial incentives for not switching. 

 

Still, the findings emphasize the importance of software and hardware integration in ecosystems that are becoming more loosely coupled. 

 

The survey also suggests users are familiar with the issues involved in being an early adopter. About 12 percent of respondents indicated they would want to be “among the first to own any new smartphone, while 88 percent they would be happy to wait until problems were ironed out. 

 

“Quality of experience” issues would seem to be growing in importance as devices get more complicated and complete value chains get more “moving parts.” 

 

And users might not be as happy with their new smartphones as sometimes seems to be the case.