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Last week saw Ofcom release quarterly figures going back to 2012 that detail the amount of complaints received about specific mobile phone network operators.

Three making great progress

The main finding from the statistics was that the Three network had received the fewest customer complaints in Q1 2014 of all the mobile networks. Three managed to topple O2 which had been ranked as the network with the fewest complaints for the last 13 consecutive quarters.

The performance of Three is made even more noteworthy by the fact that in Q1 2012 they were the network that received the most complaints – over three times as many as O2. Obviously this shows that Three have taken great steps in customer satisfaction and the quality of their network in a very short space of time.

Consistently the three operators that had the fewest number of customer complaints were Thee, O2 and Vodafone in that order. In fact each of the networks were below the industry average number of complaints which currently stands at 0.07 per 1,000 customers.

EE showing high levels of customer complaints

The network with the highest number of customer complaints was consistently EE. The last 7 consecutive quarters have shown EE to have the most customer complaints of any UK mobile network. The last recorded quarter (Q1 2014) showed EE to have 0.12 complaints per 1,000 customers. It should be noted that the EE figures show a consolidated figure that includes EE, T-Mobile and Orange, but this should not justify their number of complaints being nearly double the industry average.

Virgin Mobile were the final network to be scored and they too were above the industry average in terms of complaints.

The online advertising solutions company Chitika produced an interesting graphic last week detailing which smartphones sent the most traffic to websites.

Over the course of a week in June, Chitika took a sample of ad impressions and analysed the amount of traffic each main phone manufacturer sent during that period so that they could collate a percentage market share.

Of course, this isn’t the most scientific method of determining market share because there are a number of metrics that can skew the data but in terms of sheer numbers it produces some interesting, if not entirely unsurprising findings.

Most people would have guessed that Apple devices would have the highest percentage share of mobile traffic with a very healthy 48.9%. What is perhaps more surprising is the fact that the next brand Samsung weighs in with only a 22.8% share. I would have expected this level to have been higher, although the market share for Samsung increased from January to June by 1.4% whilst the share of Apple devices during the same time period dropped by 0.8% so there is positive growth for Samsung but the Apple market share appears to be falling over time.

BlackBerry have a fairly healthy third place in the stats with a 15% share, but there is a big drop off to the manufacturers with the next best market share with HTC, Nokia and Sony in the 2 – 3% market share range.

There are some big phone releases expected over the coming months such as the new iPhone 6 so it will be interesting to see how these new phones alter that statistics. The advent of the new iPhone will surely arrest the decline in Apple device market share and see them top the 50% overall traffic level.

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