It's unclear whether it can be chalked up as bravery, stupidity or something in between, but the data is still the same in the end: despite a sweeping recall that affected 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7s, people are still using their devices at the same rate they had since the day the recall was first announced.
Yes, that's right. Not even the risk of the phone exploding is enough to keep users away. To be fair, however, the risk of the phone exploding is actually relatively small. According to Samsung, the Note 7's manufacturing defect affects less than 0.01 percent of all Note 7 handsets sold, meaning that we're potentially only really looking at 1,000 defective phones.
However, one would think that, with its potential to destroy a jeep, a hotel room and even an entire house, people would be to quicker to abandon the phone. Instead, according to data from Apteligent, a mobile analytics company, the "usage rate of the phone among existing users has been almost the exact same since the day of the recall."
Here's a graph illustrating this point:
You'll notice there's was a momentary halt in usage and adoption after the recall as retailers stopped selling the phones and Samsung activated an exchange program. However, since then, the usage rate of the phone has remained pretty much the same.
What's going on?
While stupidity and bravery are two likely answers for this — and is likely the case in a few instances — the real cause may be Samsung itself. Yes, the South Korean company has announced a recall for the device, but the recall couldn't be any more confusing if Samsung tried. This, in turn, led to consumers scratching their heads in confusion, deciding that the best thing to do would be to do nothing at all.
Ever since the initial recall was announced on Sept. 2, the entire conversation surrounding the recall has been almost as noteworthy as the exploding phones that caused it. First, Samsung said it would "voluntarily replace [users'] current device with a new one over the coming weeks," but never mentioned whether it was safe to continue using the device. Then, a week later, users were instructed to not only replace their device, but to power it down.
In the same release, Samsung said that exchanging a faulty Note 7 for a new device would only happen "pending [...] approval" from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), but did not give a timeline for this approval process or what the delay might be. This in particular has become a major source of confusion, as the CPSC issued its first statement only a week after the Sept. 2 announcement. The commission still hasn't announced an official recall, since the exact cause of the explosions — and how to deal with them — are yet to be determined.
This, unfortunately, has led to even greater trouble for those involved. For example, while carriers do have an unspecified number of Note 7s waiting in storage as part of the exchange program, they can't do anything until the CPSC clears them for distribution.
So, where does that leave users? Confused, with a potentially exploding phone in their house.
Photo: Garry Knight | Flickr
