This Businessweek article isn’t new. It’s from August 2019. But it has some great data visualizations that I thought our readers would be interested in, looking at technology adoption in general and mobile OS market share in particular, starting with this one:
The richer the country the bigger the share of iOS is.
As simple as that with some exceptions like Russia where people buy iPhones on credit and use them for up to six years.
That makes no sense. Poverty rates in the US are relatively high, yet it’s 50/50. Meanwhile, in wealthy countries like most European countries, it’s Android all the way.
I think it’s more about Network effects. iPhones are more popular in the US, Japan, UK, and China because they got a foothold among influential users in those places, and that affected demand, causing Apple to spend more energy marketing in those markets. But it’s definitely true that countries that are the most price sensitive tend to be heavily Android, and in fact, “other” has the biggest share in India and Africa, where large numbers of people are extremely price sensitive.
David Adams,
I agree, the network effects are extremely strong.
Thanks for posting that data visualization by the way, I hadn’t seen it before. It’s very illustrative!
Also IPhones and other high-end phones in the US market are what are called Loss-Leader in marketing, which the various cell phone companies like At&t, Verizon ,T-mobile use in their ads for their products and services.
Loss leader – Wikipedia
A loss leader (also leader) is a pricing strategy where a product is sold at a price below its market cost to stimulate other sales of more profitable goods or services.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader
iphones were very rarely used as loss leaders in the US. Everynow and then there will be a promotion by the smaller companies offering a free upgrade if you switch, but those are heavily conditional on the trade in or require a number of lines and services to be added. Next to no one does those. There is a lot of hand me down phones here though. So while you might have a friend that used the iphone 7 for a couple of years then upgraded and gave the older functioning phone to a friend or family member.
While I generally agree with your view, I also think the fact that there are tons of Android options at every tier whereas with Apple, their selection is much more reduced. It’s hard for a single manufacturer with limited options to compete against several manufacturers with plenty of sku to choose from and ever rotating deals. Apple did/does one very smart thing – they hit it hard where they had/have any advantage and didn’t/don’t bother in markets they’ll get smoked with drastically changing their strategy.
birdie
Vietnam says “No!”
The reasons are varied and complex, Indonesia for example I know intimately. For premium devices they have a low iPhone and massive Blackberry uptake, not because Blackberry is cheaper than iPhone or Android, but primarily because keyboards work reliably in all conditions of a tropical environments. So phones that are keyboard based are preferred over touchscreens that suffer significant performance degradation in the presence of perspiration and high humidity, anecdotally something that the iPhone’s gesture and flick interface are particularly susceptible to.
It seems most Americans buy their higher-end cell phones on credit or some kind of payment plan. In fact, American providers try to keep customers in a state of perpetual payments with (bi)yearly “upgrades”. The 1-2 year old phones people exchange are then sold again as `reconditioned`, or shipped to foreign markets and sold there.
In the USA a major drive for iOS adoption is iMessages, which has gained enough traction to actually be a defacto SMS replacement in many social groups, to the point of people complaining about “green bubbles” when Android people message them.
iPhones are not that expensive BTW, there are a ton of refurbs in Amazon for £200 or less. It’s just that, after Android 5.1.1, Android has gotten pretty good and there is no reason to compromise for an old iPhone. Unless you live in the US and everyone in your social circle complains about you sending them “green bubbles” of course.
kurkosdr,
I don’t know if you’re serious about people complaining about “green bubbles”, but that’s hilarious! Let’s be frank, that’s *their* problem not mine, they need to ask apple to let them customize the colors. And if apple refuses, well they made their bed, now they have to sleep in it, haha. (Hint: I don’t sympathize)
Its not the color, its the reduced funcitonality of SMS vs iMessages that people mostly complain about. Green is just signifying that its not iMessage.
Bill Shooter of Bul,
I don’t know much about it. Are there many differences between imessages and RCS, the intended successor to SMS?
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2019/12/rcs-the-successor-to-sms-is-now-live-for-android-users/
The two biggest complaints I remember hearing from people were you couldn’t `text videos` with Android, and iMessage could use wifi so data/text caps didn’t matter.
BTW I do think the modern smartphone revolution started with the iPhone. Before that, phone manufacturers were interested more in producing “technology showcase” products that simply satisfied a checklist of features, all of them implemented badly, rather than devices that enhance the user’s experience. Early betas of Android showed it to be no different BTW.
I had the displeasure of using a Symbian S60 phone (Nokia N70), a classic pre-iPhone smartphone, and it was horrible. The Gallery was crap at organizing photos (their own PC suite app couldn’t create albums in the gallery), the music app was slow and had crap sound, the video player had bad controls and a bad UI transitions. And all incoming bluetooth files went into the SMS inbox (wtf?) and you had to manually transfer them to storage. And the apps (.sis) had no well-known app store and could wreck the system if they wanted. The browser was horrible.
And you know almost every smartphone was like that before the iPhone came, with the difference some of them had touchscreens. It’s why phone manufacturers rarely showed their products’ UIs in action, just a photo of the hardware and the list of features. Meanwhile Apple had no problem making advertisements that showed just a finger using their device.
The iPhone taught the industry that UX matters and app sandboxing matters. Android was just the second mover (there is such a thing as a “second mover advantage” btw)
kurkosdr,
Apple didn’t invent sandboxing on phones though, my nokia ran sanboxed j2me apps long before apple came around. Granted these weren’t very useful or popular, but regardless apple was obviously not the first to sandbox mobile apps.
Apple does deserve credit for popularizing mobile touch apps. However that reputation remains somewhat stained due to the fact that apple exploited its control over hardware to block competing app stores. So although they won, it was partly due to monopoly tactics and not just their own innovation. Apple wasn’t even the first to do apps on the iphone, cydia’s popularity took off even before apple got in the game and only after that did apple see the potential of 3rd party apps with iphone 2. So while steve jobs was too egotistical to share credit for anything, IMHO multiple parties deserve credit for molding the iphone.
So much respectability for google to keep these devices secure and it is what we know: devices are left on their own.
Imagine the right android exploit and we could have a global IoT/ISP crisis.
And the problem that Android means Google 😡
Android means Google since day 1. Google bought the company that makes Android before the first public release of the software happened. Google foots the development costs for Android. Google owns the copyrights for the source code of Android (minus the Linux kernel) and can re-license as needed. They just drop some source code under AOSP.
This is not a similar case to Linux where Linus Torvalds doesn’t own the copyrights to the entirety of the source code.
Why the angry face?
‘kurkosdr
Android means Google since day 1. Google bought the company that makes Android before the first public release of the software happened. Google foots the development costs for Android. Google owns the copyrights for the source code of Android (minus the Linux kernel) and can re-license as needed. They just drop some source code under AOSP.
This is not a similar case to Linux where Linus Torvalds doesn’t own the copyrights to the entirety of the source code.
Why the angry face?’
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Likely because there will never be the the right android exploit and the global IoT/ISP crisis he and others like him wants to see because of the nature of the Android Market.
“2020-01-30 3:42 pm
Bill Shooter of Bul
iphones were very rarely used as loss leaders in the US. Everynow and then there will be a promotion by the smaller ”
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Dude, just *LOOK* at an TV,Newspaper or Internet ad by At&t, Verizon ,T-mobile or companies like Comcast or retailers like Best Buy.
See the Shinny *NEW* Iphone or other high-end phone being used to lure people to switch over or sign up as a new customer for their products and services?
That’s a product being used as a Loss-Leader in the marketing of their services.
yoko-t,
Can you explain your criteria for something being a loss leader?
This is the dictionary definition that I’m familiar with:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/loss%20leader
“something (such as merchandise) sold at a loss in order to draw customers”
The reason I ask is because I don’t see how apple is a loss leader? If anything, they have even more profit between prices and costs than other manufacturers. This data is older, let me know if you find newer data…
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/iphone-cost-what-apple-is-paying/
At bestbuy the (latest & greatest) iphone11 pro costs from $999.99 for 64GB version through $1,349.99 for 512GB version. Do you consider apple a loss leader at these prices? If so, why?
The 64GB version from ATT costs $1099.99, or $100 more than bestbuy.
https://www.att.com/buy/phones/apple-iphone-11-pro-max-64gb-gold.html
Is there any chance you are referring to carrier subsidies? That’s quite a bit different than apple being a loss leader. You aren’t really getting a discount on the phone, you get a line of credit and pay it back as a loan. The same phone as above at ATT costs $36.67/mo for 30 months, which totals $1100.10 and is practically identical to the full retail price.
So can you explain where apple being a loss leader comes into play?
“Is there any chance you are referring to carrier subsidies? That’s quite a bit different than apple being a loss leader. You aren’t really getting a discount on the phone, you get a line of credit and pay it back as a loan. The same phone as above at ATT costs $36.67/mo for 30 months, which totals $1100.10 and is practically identical to the full retail price.”
I was going to say the same. An example of a loss leader would be Costco’s hot dog & a drink deal for $1.50 – a product sold at a loss with the intention that it will increase customer traffic and generate more overall sales. That’s hugely different from manufacturers or carriers extending customers credit allowing for monthly payments that make the high-priced products “affordable”. Most people don’t have $1000 +/- disposable cash sitting around to go buy a new phone every 1-2 years. But, making a $20-$35 monthly payment is far more doable. It’s basically the only way to sell these high-priced phones in significant numbers. Between your phone, tv, car, and whatever else, you may bury yourself under a mountain of debt but at least people will look at your new iphone with envy until they go finance their own.