In 2016, few mobile tech stories garnered more attention than the Galaxy Note 7’s exploding batteries. As you likely remember, Samsung ended up having to recall the Note 7 last year after reports began to spread of the phablet bursting into flames. Samsung knows that this catastrophe is still fresh on many consumers’ minds, but based on one recent survey, the company might not have much to worry about.
In order to determine how the Note 7 recall might affect smartphone sales in 2017, marketing group Fluent asked more than 1,500 American consumers whether or not they would consider buying a Galaxy S8.
As it turns out, 63% of current Samsung phone owners said that the Note 7 recall “had no impact on their likelihood to purchase a Samsung phone in the future.” Furthermore, only 14% of the Samsung phone owners to respond to the survey said they even had safety concerns about the upcoming Galaxy S8.
Of those who actually owned a Galaxy Note 7 before the recall, 46% said that the incident wouldn’t change their smartphone purchasing decision at all, while 52% don’t believe that the incident even had an impact on Samsung’s reputation. Samsung has apologized profusely for the exploding phones and said on more than one occasion that it would do everything it could to get back in the good graces of its fans.
While some of the results of this survey should be encouraging for Samsung, others are less positive. For example, while 89% of iPhone owners say that they will buy another iPhone, only 58% of Samsung phone owners say the same. Additionally, 33% don’t care about the potential addition of the Bixby AI assistant while 37% admitted that they don’t even know what Bixby is supposed to be.
