Games proving popular with smartphone users

Smartphone users download more mobile games. Research from firms like M:Metrics has proved this consistently in the last couple of years, and the recent success of the App Store has showed it's true for iPhone too.

Now a new survey from J.D. Power and Associates has offered more evidence. The company's Business Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study, released late last week, canvassed nearly 1,400 business users with smartphones.

It found that 34 per cent of them download third-party apps for their handsets, with the most popular category being games downloaded by 49 per cent of those users.

Note, this is business users, not consumers. It's not all work, work, work clearly.

Games don't figure on the list of most popular reasons for choosing a particular smartphone, though.

45 per cent of users wanted a device with internet capability, 41 per cent email, 39 per cent chose their phone for its design and style, while 37 per cent went for Bluetooth capabilities or a QWERTY keyboard.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Apple's iPhone got the highest rating in the survey for customer satisfaction, scoring 778 out of 1,000 on the company's points scale.

It was followed by BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (703) and Samsung (701) - the survey groups handset makers, rather than individual smartphones.

Among the biggest bugbears for users are bugs and crashes, though. 44 per cent said they have to reboot their device at least once a week, while 34 per cent report an application freezing or malfunctioning at least once a week.