JD Power have published the result of their bi-annual smartphone customer satisfaction survey.

Overall, except for HTC and Blackberry, customer satisfaction is on the increase, with customers increasingly happy with styling, feature sets, usability and software.

For the second survey in a row however Nokia’s smartphones have been most improved in customer satisfaction, improving 4% from 6 months ago, and 13% Year on Year.

This brought Nokia racing up from the last place a year ago, when the score was based on their Symbian phones, to 5th spot 6 months ago, to the current second spot in March 2013. It is likely when all of their Symbian handsets wash out of the market the number will increase even more and pass the iPhone, as has been the case in other customer satisfaction surveys involving Windows Phone.

Overall customers in general cared most about performance, design, features and ease of operation. It seems Windows Phone 8 has been ticking their boxes very well, and certainly better than Android.

OEM Mar-12 Sep-12 Mar-13 Seq-Growth YoY-Growth Apple 839 849 855 1% 2% Nokia 702 763 795 4% 13% Samsung 769 782 793 1% 3% Motorola 758 777 792 2% 4% HTC 798 790 790 0% -1% LG 733 742 744 0% 2% Blackberry 733 740 732 -1% 0%

"As the capabilities of wireless phones and their applications continue to expand, and as customers grow more reliant on their device, handset manufacturers have an opportunity to further shape the customer experience and impact satisfaction with better integration of services and more communication options, such as video chat," said Kirk Parsons, senior director of telecommunications services at J.D. Power and Associates. "It is important, however, that manufacturers meet the expectations of those customers who take advantage of such offers by ensuring the features are intuitive and, ultimately, rewarding to them. Providing an easy-to-use, yet powerful operating system with the ability to customize applications to suit individual needs is essential to providing a high-quality and rewarding wireless experience."

Read more at JD Power here.