Cynicism.

Consumer doubt.

Public anger.

Customer frustration.

Negative publicity.

Customer defection.

Loss of market share.

Loss of revenue.

Staff defections.

Internal panic.

Corporate struggle to survive.

A company that releases a phone that ceases to work as a phone when customers hold it in their hands may reasonably be expected to have to deal with all of the above over the months that ensue.

Not Apple.

The iPhone Blog is conducting a survey today on customer satisfaction with the iPhone 4. Of more than 3,000 respondents at the time of this writing, the runaway top selection is “Love it, best phone ever.” It has about 40 percent of the vote. A total of about 53 percent either love it or like it. Twenty-six percent of respondents simply don’t have an iPhone, so their responses can be thrown out. Adjusted for this, 72 percent of all respondents either love or like their new iPhone. Many of these people lose reception when they hold the phone in their hand.

Another choice on the poll is “Ask me again when they fix the antenna issue.” Just nine percent of respondents selected that option.

What if Microsoft released a phone with the same problem? Samsung? Nokia? Do you think 72 percent of all consumers would love or like that phone?

No.

Because Apple has consumer evangelists, and those companies do not.

Because consumer evangelists are a detour around big, potentially very damaging trouble.

More proof that every consumer electronics company must do everything in its power to develop consumer evangelists.