Samsung's nightmarish past week continues as the Galaxy Note 7 worldwide recall is seemingly causing the company to lose customers to Apple, its main rival in the smartphone industry.
CNET launched a pair of polls on Twitter, asking Galaxy Note 7 owners if they will be sticking with Samsung or if they would be switching to the iPhone 7.
The results revealed that 30.5 percent of current Galaxy Note 7 owners will be taking up Samsung's exchange offer under the global recall program. However, nearly half of Galaxy Note 7 customers, at 48.5 percent, said that they would be switching to Apple's iPhone 7.
Adding the 11.5 percent of customers who said that they would be shifting to another smartphone aside from the iPhone 7, nearly 50 percent of Galaxy Note 7 owners seem to have their faith on Samsung and the company's latest flagship device.
The poll saw a total of 3,329 customers participate, and while there is no way to make sure that all the responses are made by legitimate Galaxy Note 7 owners, the trend is shown to be constant in the two separate polls from where the totals were acquired.
There is an alarming statistic in the CNET poll, however, as 9.5 percent of respondents said that they will not be exchanging their Galaxy Note 7 and will instead keep the current version of the smartphone that they currently have. This is not an advisable thing to do, as the explosive batteries of the Galaxy Note 7 can do serious damage, such as causing an entire Jeep Grand Cherokee to be engulfed in flames.
The worldwide recall for the Galaxy Note 7 comes at the worst timing possible for Samsung. The company was hoping that the smartphone would continue the momentum that it gained from the successful spring launch of the Galaxy S7. With the release of the Galaxy Note 7 coming before Apple's iPhone 7, the LG V20 and the Google Pixel, Samsung was hoping that their flagship smartphone would gain the early advantage in the smartphone wars.
However, as incidents of exploding batteries and Galaxy Note 7 units catching fire increased in number, Samsung was forced to launch a worldwide recall for the smartphone and stop sales of the device until all the released units have been replaced.
The impact of the recall program on the revenue of Samsung will be made clearer once the earnings report of the company for this quarter is released. The effect of the incident might last longer than this quarter's profit, though, as Samsung customers may find it hard to once again trust a product by the company.
