Comment Re:Hold the Phone! (Score 1) 490
You're assuming that AT&T commissioned the survey and the report and not Apple. If Apple commissioned the report and the Yankee Group are shills as alleged then that quote is perfectly acceptable.
I would say that if anyone commissioned a report like this it would be Apple, not AT&T. Why? The first hint is that the report this is based on is called "Why iPhones Matter." Next is that AT&T now has Android phones, so why would they try to defame phones in their lineup? More hints show up in the article. Even more in the public summary of the report, which focuses largely on how much more consumer driven the iPhone platform is. Here's that summary:
http://www.yankeegroup.com/ResearchDocument.do?id=53903
However, even if neither Apple nor AT&T commissioned the report or the survey, the information about how the Yankee Group conducts their surveys is telling about the quality of the data. Surveys are fickle things and how you collect the data is very important. Since we don't have access to the data (unless someone wants to fork over the money to buy it) we can't know for sure. The sampling could have failed to be sufficiently random. The questions could have been skewed such that respondents would give more favorable responses to the iPhone, or less favorable responses to Android devices. Seeing the dramatic gap in customer satisfaction, even as Android phones gain popularity (I base this claim on the increasing sales volume), made me question this survey. Realizing that this is the group that had Laura DiDio spreading FUD about Linux doubles my doubts about the legitimacy of those numbers.