A brand new JD Power Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study for the first six months of 2012 shows Apple as the highest ranked company in customer satisfaction among smartphone manufacturers. In a move that may or may not surprise some of you, HTC edged out Samsung as the highest ranked Android manufacturer with Motorola and LG following up in third and fourth place.

The Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study measures satisfaction in several key factors in order of importance: performance (29%); ease of operation (26%); physical design (24%); and features (21%). For smartphones, the key factors are: performance (33%); physical design (23%); features (22%); and ease of operation (22%). For the eight consecutive study (it’s held twice a year), Apple ranks highest among smartphone manufacturers with a score of 849, followed by HTC at 790.

The study does find some other notable factors including nearly two in 10 current smartphone owners report experiencing a software or device malfunction. Almost 20% of all smartphone buyers purchase based on price, compared with 14% a year ago. Twenty-two percent of study respondents indicated they received their smartphone for free, up from 18% a year ago.

The study is based on the experiences reported by 8,736 smartphone owners between January and June 2012.

SourceLink, a top 5 largest privately held CRM/Direct Marketing Agency and a top 3 GPO supplier, conducted a webinar August 30, 2012, focused on the understanding and uses of Big Data in marketing. The insights shared and feedback of the attendees showcased a need for a better understanding in organizations of all sizes about how to handle Big Data and how consumer information drives customer communications.

The webinar, entitled "Big Data: The Challenge and the Opportunity," drew several hundred professionals, with most attendees from the financial services, insurance, education, non-profit, and retail markets. During the webinar, SourceLink asked polling questions about Big Data and customer-centric marketing.

Nearly half of those polled (47%) reported not having a formal marketing strategy to leverage Big Data, and an additional 17% were uncertain of their organization's future plans. On a positive note, 23% conveyed that their organization has a defined strategy for Big Data as a subset of their overall data strategy, with 13% currently utilizing Big Data in their marketing strategy. Over two-thirds of all attendees have not yet integrated Big Data analytics into existing marketing databases.

When it comes to social media – where a large portion of Big Data is created – 41% of attendees have not developed a strategy for social media monitoring or listening, plus another 22% are unsure of how to monitor this activity. When asked, "What is your biggest marketing challenge today with Big Data?" The top three concerns were determining what data is relevant to marketing (28%), effectively using data to personalize marketing communications (27%), and capturing or collecting enough relevant data (20%).

Temkin Group, a leading market research and consulting firm that helps organizations improve their customer experience, today released research showing that President Obama has a larger number of Promoters than Mitt Romney. Using a customer experience metric called Net Promoter Score (NPS), Temkin Group examined how likely consumers are to recommend the candidates to their friends and colleagues.

Temkin Group surveyed 5,000 U.S. consumers in August, asking about their attitudes towards both President Obama and Mitt Romney. The research shows that Obama and Romney have very low levels of NPS, -67% for Romney and -33% for Obama. Both candidates have more than twice as many Detractors (consumers that are not likely to recommend them) as they do Promoters (consumers that are very likely to recommend them).

"Obama has many more Promoters than Romney, but both have pretty dismal levels of NPS," states Bruce Temkin, Managing Partner of Temkin Group. Temkin goes on to say "if a company had these levels of NPS they'd be in trouble and likely be shedding customers to their competitors."

As wireless phones continue to be integrated in every aspect of consumers’ lives, smartphones are quickly gaining a foothold as the centerpiece of mobile social media. The seamless connectivity offered by mobile social networking applications, such as Twitter and Facebook, play a critical role in overall smartphone satisfaction, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2012 U.S. Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study(SM)–Volume 2 and the J.D. Power and Associates 2012 U.S. Wireless Traditional Mobile Phone Satisfaction Study(SM)–Volume 2, both released today.

The Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study finds that customers who regularly use mobile channels of social media and gaming applications are more satisfied with their device and spend more per month for wireless service than customers who do not. In 2012, 67 percent of smartphone customers indicate they have downloaded social networking applications on their device and report spending more than 100 minutes per week using those applications. Overall smartphone satisfaction among customers using social networking applications is 810 (on a 1,000-point scale), which is 55 points higher than among smartphone customers who do not. Additionally, 69 percent of smartphone customers indicate they have downloaded gaming applications and spend an average of 81 minutes per week playing games. Satisfaction among customers using gaming applications is 61 points higher than among those who do not (813 vs. 752, respectively).

“As the capabilities of wireless phones and their applications continue to expand, allowing customers to more often use their device, handset manufacturers have an opportunity to shape the customer experience and impact satisfaction with better application integration and social networking options,” said Uma Jha, senior director of mobile devices at J.D. Power and Associates.

Gannett is on a shopping spree. After the media company snapped up advertising company BLiNQ for $92 million a few weeks ago, Gannett is announcing the acquisition of Mobestream Media, maker of the Key Ring consumer rewards mobile platform, Key Ring. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Key Ring is a mobile app that allows consumers to consolidate all of their loyalty and rewards cards and coupons into one spot. Via the app, consumers can access their digital coupons, digitize their loyalty cards, join new loyalty programs, manage their accounts online and share their cards and offers through their social networks and email. Users also receive location-based mobile coupons and other promotional offers.

Key Ring, which raised funding from Austin Ventures, is available for the iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry devices. To date, more than five million users have downloaded the free Key Ring app to scan and store existing loyalty cards.