Mobile Payments Doesn’t Sway Device Upgrade For 97 Percent

Each year comes the time when mobile users scramble to upgrade their handsets with the launch of the latest Samsung or iPhone, but the advertised features don’t always influence the buyer’s decision making, so says the results of a recent survey by ecoATM, which found out that mobile payment features don’t sway the device upgrade decisions for 97 percent of users.

The survey questioned 1,000 smartphone owners about upgrade plans and found that mobile payments was the least popular feature, which could possibly encourage a user to upgrade to the new Samsung S6.

Consumers reported to value pricing and battery life over other factors like better camera and higher internal storage, but over 25 percent reported that no new feature would possibly encourage them to upgrade to a new phone.

The survey results have come at an interesting time when Samsung has just announced the launch of its two new phones the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge. With the launch of the new devices, Samsung is back in race to win back its title of the No. 1 smartphone shipper in the world, which it lost to Apple last quarter.

A possible shift of loyalty from Apple to Samsung was found in the survey results, with more than 40 percent of current iPhone users showing interest in making a switch to Samsung if low upgrade options were made available.

With the introduction of Samsung Pay in the late Galaxy S6 phones, Samsung now stands shoulder to shoulder to its biggest competitor, Apple. Though Samsung Pay would use NFC technology for processing mobile payments, its recent acquisition of Loop Pay, which supports contactless payments, would make the newly launch devices backward compatible for almost all mag stripe payment terminals across the country.