Rafe's come across an interesting paper from Market Strategies International over the holidays which we've been discussing here at All About Windows Phone. It looks at the factors and inhibitors that are perceived by customers when switching between mobile phone platforms. While the study focuses on 'iPhone, Samsung, and Other' as the three major platforms, there's a lot of interesting information in the survey.

The point that has caught our eye is the indication that consumers do not 'choose' to go Android, Apple (or by extrapolation, Windows Phone) for everything that makes up the ecosystem, rather they look to applications and physical characteristics.

As it turns out, consumers do not place high importance on staying within the same brand family or selecting devices based on how easy it is to share content across devices. These two factors fell near the bottom of potential criteria for consumers selecting a smartphone or switching from an Apple phone to an Android phone.... Those moving away from the iPhone were focused on form factor issues such as a larger screen size and the ability to customize their phone more fully.

The study was conducted between Oct 17 and Oct 25 2012, with 1060 respondents in the US, Market Strategies point out that because of the opt-in nature, it's not possible to provide accurate error bars or to extrapolate this out as a national percentage, but it does provide some food for thought, especially for the marketing departments, as we go in to 2013.

You can read the full survey (with all the graphs) over on Market Strategies. Anything catching your eye in all the numbers?