LG Electronics, another South Korean tech giant, ranked third, while Nokia and Sony tied for fourth. Other top rankers included Motorola, HTC and Blackberry, according to the Brand Keys 2013 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index based on an annual survey of 49,000 Americans by New York-based market researcher Brand Keys.
In the laptop computers division, Samsung and Apple tied for first, followed by Asus; Toshiba/Sony (tied); Acer/Hewlett Packard (tied); Lenovo/Visio (tied); and Dell.
Amazon unseated Apple in the tablet PC category for the first time. Apple and Samsung tied for second. Barnes & Noble came in third.
Samsung retain its crown in the flat-screen TV division, followed by Visio, Sony and LG.
In the printer category, Cannon placed first, while Samsung ranked second.
Brand Keys CEO Robert Passikoff said: "Increased expectation in personalization and a sense of enhanced personal productivity in the smartphone category contributed to Samsung's triumph over Apple."
By Keat Min Woo
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com