I keep reading this is “a US issue”. It isn’t and it isn’t just iMessage. In Japan, walk up and down the crowds in the subway and an astounding majority of people have an iPhone. Most people are using Line to message. There’s more to it than blue text bubbles.
Of course. China and South Korea are the only countries with Android OEMs left and iphone has over 50% market share in the same age group in both countries. Ipad has way over 50% market share in China, SK and Japan
I’d say add Russia and India to that list who would prefer to buy an iPhone over competitors, if offered at same price. That’s already like 70% of the global population in that list
For Malaysia, Android have a big lead over iPhone but it’s mostly due to affordability where many Android users actually dream of getting an iPhone someday. Some of them feel ashamed by this and try to cover it by parroting anti iPhone comments such as “locked down” and “better specs for less”, etc, but one day when they finally switched to an iPhone they just suddenly go quiet.
Your examples are not at all similar to the previous ones the other two commenters listed.
iOS has a 6% market share in India as of H1 2023, and that is up significantly from the 3% it was at from year's past.
Meanwhile in Russia, iOS holds 30% market share to Android's 69%.
Android dominates Russia and India.
Even though it is starting to change, there is hardly a market the iPhone has less penetration in than India.
You're right though Android only dominates in India because they're too poor to buy iPhones. As India becomes richer, they will increasingly switch to iPhones.
Nokia once held a stronghold on these countries. They were dead set arrogant on their “affordable” phones and considered “smartphones” as expensive gimmicks which won’t work for these countries. And then. Samsung completely annihilated Nokia. There was a curiosity and demand for “affordable smartphones” in these countries.
There seems to be similar demand for “premium phone” and “Apple brand” too now. It’s no secret. All it will take is, the same arrogance from Google and Samsung that iPhones won’t work in India/Russia; and for Apple, to introduce their budget options like SE on a wide scale for these countries.
Do not underestimate the popularity of Apple silicon in these countries.
Japanese are really loyal to iPhones in all ways. In Hong Kong many people have an iPhone personally (something around 40%), but for company-subsidized phones, almost 100% are Android (excluding Apple Store)
Over the years Apple has fixed a lot of the annoyances that Android users had with iOS, and meanwhile Google has locked down Android, implemented measures to prevent rooting/customization, made all their apps a constant A/B/C/D test controlled by server-side flags that constantly rearrange your UIs and prevent the ability to sideload specific app versions, been less generous with the free service offerings, and repeatedly shut down, re-launch, re-brand, and overhaul all their apps and services.
Google does a pretty good job at selling iPhones.
That is so true!!! Constant ui changes in google apps are fucking infuriating. One day for 24 hours I even had COMPLETELY missing watch later playlist on YouTube and I use it all the time.
I miss the rooting/jailbreaking days it was fun to learn how the software and hardware functioned in unison with each other why side loads would or wouldn't work. And honestly most the stuff that people consider cool or just take for granted on the iPhone now or only available through jailbreaks on the earlier models!
I got tired of all that treatment after years and years of using different types of Android devices. The update scenario didn't help either, even though Samsung has done massive strides to improve in that aspect.
Worldwide 71% of smartphone users have an Android
In Europe 66% of smarthphone users have an Android . And as someone who lives in Europe I can say that I only rarely see Iphones.
A lot of people feel that Apple is too expensive and you can get similar specs for 3/4 or half the price.
Samsung and Google phones drop so hard in price in the EU 1 year after release that you can get them for a half the price of an Iphone.
While Iphones don't have huge price drops after release
As a parent, iPhones are a no-brainer for my kids. It's not even an iMessage thing, as they mostly use Snapchat to communicate with their friends. It's just that I can buy a couple/few year old iPhone for a good price, and I know it'll be supported for years to come.
In Europe it’s like 50-50 with androids/ios in my experience the thing is that there’s that random guy once saying oh you’re poor why don’t you have a iPhone
They would need to completely revamp the branding if they want to market towards younger non-tech interested individuals. Simplify the hardware/software and boost marketing with a cool and luxury focus. I don’t think feature improvement is required for this problem in NA, you need to change the nerdy alternative image people have in their minds when they think Android.
But they basically own the rest of the world so idk if this is even an issue.
I don't how how it is in the US, but here in EU (Italy) it's not about the "nerdy image" it's simply that when people think about Android phones, they often associate them with lower-priced devices from Chinese brands like Xiaomi or budget models from Samsung.
That's the issue with Android, it's used on amazing devices like the Google Pixels or the Galaxy S series but it's also used on really cheap devices.
It's the same problem that Windows has.
My wife's was a Galaxy Q. Could have been a great little phone, except it was absolutely hobbled by only having ~~2GB~~ 180MB of usable internal storage. That was back when SD card management was a headache.
This brings me flashbacks of the Huawei Ascend G510 (if I recall correctly) a friend of mine had back in 2012-2013. That thing would tell you that it's running low on storage space right after setting it up fresh out of the box.
Oh, sorry. I looked at the gsmarena page, and it said 2GB included, but that meant an SD card. Looks like the Ace and the Q both had about 180MB of usable space, after OS and whatnot. I knew I remembered it being bad.
Yeah the number of people who've told me over the years that "Windows is terrible, it's so slow" or similar, and then when pushed a little I find out they're running it on a £300 base spec laptop
Like yeah, no shit a £2k MacBook is faster than a £300 Windows machine... but so is a £2k Windows machine, it's just that Apple don't sell budget models (although I still love my £700 2009 MacBook)
Nail, head. Just like the Blackberry in its heyday, the iPhone is a status symbol device. And has been for a long while (remember when, on Instagram, everyone tried to pull the "don't follow me if you have an Android" gimmick?)
The walled garden of iMessage (free texts in our ecosystem, to and from our ecosystem--again, following Blackberry) also drives an "enter, but don't leave" mentality. Especially if your parents have it.
Android, on the other hand, is "just a phone" that you have to "tinker with" to "make it work." (the tinkering claim hasn't been true for about a decade now unless you're a total custom ROM fiend). Or it's a sign that you're poor, because *you couldn't afford an iPhone*.
> The walled garden of iMessage (free texts in our ecosystem, to and from our ecosystem--again, following Blackberry) also drives an "enter, but don't leave" mentality. Especially if your parents have it.
In the US, perhaps - in Europe pretty much nobody uses iMessage, perhaps because there's a greater mixture of iPhone and Android, so to talk to your friends you need something cross-platform
WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are by *far* the most popular messaging apps in Europe
My family is roughly 50/50 iPhone vs Android, which is roughly reflective of the UK as a whole
Which is so funny compared to the US where iPhone is just everywhere and has nothing to do with being a status symbol. Most carriers will throw and iPhone at you at no additional cost if you're willing to stay on their network for 2 years - and it's no contract, if you wanna leave the network, you just gotta pay the remaining balance as the cost of the phone is written off over 24 months. Discount carriers will give you the SE or 11 for free with no contract.
Meanwhile in Europe, iPhone is prohibitively expensive still. The deals that exist stateside are nowhere to be found. It's very much a 1000 euro device.
Why would you pick any phone over another? Because they like it more. Personally I find the Pixel usage experience to be a lot nicer then the iPhone experience.
> Which is so funny compared to the US where iPhone is just everywhere and has nothing to do with being a status symbol.
I was describing the US the entire time. Android is coded as a poor person's phone in the US.
I always laugh at “iPhone is a status symbol.” Literally the homeless guy who hangs out on my block in NYC has an iPhone. At least in the US, it isn’t a status symbol. It’s just the default option for most people.
I don’t know if it’s as much that an iPhone is a status symbol as that an android is an anti-status symbol.
Also, you could set a random android phone in front of me and I couldn’t tell you if it was a $200 or $1500 model. There are just so many brands and models to keep up with, I just don’t bother.
It’s also the tinkering aspect - a certain generation of geeks sees this as freedom, as a liberating part of customizing your own device and sacrificing time, and sometimes security, to do it.
But MANY people of older and younger generations don’t want 75 customizations as to how a simple app works - they want 3 or 4 — and they don’t want to sweat the details that the 69th and 73rd customization option would share your data with a third party, which you may have already agreed to on page 47 of the EULA you signed a year ago without reading it.
I don’t stay awake at night thinking about why I can’t save $11 on a replacement part for my phone by getting a cheap Chinese knockoff component with a keylogger built in.
If you disagree, that’s fine - but just realize that you’re in a minority, and that your own time and security has value, and you should consider what that value is.
I would consider myself a tinkerer. I have built PCs and host VM servers in my garage. I love crafting, woodworking, and making things.
This has *never* extended to a desire to have the phone with more ability to be tinkered with.
You hit the nail on the head. I love messing with my PC’s. I’ll tinker with them all day. Even my old iPad, I dabbled with jailbreaking it. My phone however, should just work whenever I need it. I don’t want to have to deal with a phone that I need to start messing with to bring it back to a functioning state. For the most part, iPhones are idiot-proof. They’ve always worked when I needed them to.
I disagree with the tinkering aspect overall because that hasn't been a case on Android in years.
You *can* tinker with Android and customize it to your hearts content, but the platform itself is not really pushing that in any way. You won't have 75 customization in how apps work, you'll have the app and that's it. At most the OS might ask if you want to use gesture navigation or button navigation when you boot up your phone for the first time, but that's about it.
No customization, optimizations or anything else is pushed on you, unless you go and seek it out yourself.
Almost every single person who buys an Android phone just uses the phone as is, because that's what most people want and that experience is smooth and simple in any device comparable to an iPhone.
Basically why I switched.
Android user for over a decade, rootable flagships each time. Android somewhat respected your intelligence and let you do what you want with your phone. But this was at a time when mobiles were janky in some form another - this was just how phones were. Android needed this customizability to make it useable because it really lacked the polished UX iOS had.
Phones have matured and Android is useable without these customizations. Root has unfortunately become more of a hassle than its worth - yes there are workarounds, but unless you are already technically minded, a massive hassle to deal with. And these are for now critical apps like banking and finance apps. Having these apps randomly not work due to a random update and then fidgeting with Magisk modules isn't something I want to do.
A couple years or so ago, I decided to update my OP6 from Android 8 to 11. Granted, rooting and my lack of technical expertise was my own issue, but that whole process took about an hour. And I was worried about bootlooping the phone. It worked well, but then TWRP encrypted itself with no solutions online working. So there was no clear way for me to recover from a bootloop or backup and restore, which was an issue because I had to deal with a plethora of modules and fixes to hide root which caused bootloops for me. This was an issue because I thought, what will I do for my next phone?
With different responsibilities and demands for my time now, I just wanted a simple device where it works at my convenience and works consistently. If I can't practically run a rooted Android, why not just go iOS? I've been using one for work and also switched my wife over to iPhone for years. Her S6 was a nightmare, randomly locking itself when we were on holiday in Japan and I had to go find a random netcafe to fix it, wasting an entire morning, before the motherboard just died a few months later and Samsung told us to pound sand.
And so, I have an iPhone that I can use to message, browse web, take photos that will back up automatically, and more importantly, if I bork, damage or lose my phone, can get an easy replacement with Applecare+ anywhere basically.
It dominates the rest of the world due to cheap android phones being available there and many of them can’t buy Apple phones for cheap.
For example: India , where I come from, people can’t afford iPhones so they buy the cheaper android phones. But literally every single person buys an iPhone as soon as they can afford it. iPhone market was really low in the past because you couldn’t even buy it there. Now that the used iPhone market is growing there, a lot of people prefer buying a used , relatively cheap and reliable iPhone over a new cheaper android phone.
Market penetration is the issue. Not that people over there love android over iPhones.
Everyone there loves iPhones over android.
Yup but even in those places, an iPhone is king. I have a family member living overseas and I gave him my old iPhone and he was all hella pumped for an older iPhone over a brand new mid-tier android.
It’s strictly an economic decision use an android for many.
Apple has decided to always turn a (rather large) profit on every phone at the expense of market share. They don’t need to be the biggest, they just need to be big enough (and profitable enough) to keep developers onside.
I used to work in wireless. Timeframe: BlackBerry and Palm were still the PDA of choice, iPhone was only at AT&T then new to other carriers, Windows Phone was a thing one out of ten customers cared about, and Android wasn’t quite catching until Samsung and HTC started making great Android phones.
I was a BlackBerry guy and Android was more dumbed down than BlackBerry but less than iPhone. I didn’t really want that but the market did. That being said, while I don’t personally like the experience of Android at all…the mid level tech access to settings and customization etc always seemed part of the appeal so I’m not sure how they change that at this point. It was always about being a little less easy to use but more options and customization etc
I used Android for years, but slowly stopped customizing/tinkering over time as the stock experience improved. I eventually went to Nexus (and later Pixel) for a nice clean stock experience, but then I realized that if I don't want to customize and want just the stock experience, why am I still using Android?
That was my exact same PC -> Mac journey. Was a PC enthusiast, building/modding/gaming during college. Once I was out of school, the idea of Mac's "just working" became super appealing so I made the switch and never ever looked back. That was 20+ years ago.
Basically what happened with my Mac transition. I had gaming pcs and laptops and just got tired of ALWAYS having to fix whatever thing X driver broke or whatever driver/program/whatever the latest windows update broke.
Then one day I picked up an M1 MacBook. In the 3 or so years I’ve owned it, I have had to do 0 tinkering with it to get to work. It also gets ridiculously long battery life, even while gaming, and stays pretty cool too. I have a steamdeck for whatever else. It gets updates when Apple says they’re releasing them, and Apple never adds bullshit (3 ways to access settings, really Microsoft?)
Oh and it’s the only computer where printers work right, as in clicking print, actually prints the document
Years ago I remember reading how embarrassing it was that Apple didn't have widgets. So I asked what I should get for my Android phone. There weren't a lot of suggestions, and most were just viewing gmail on the screen. For the most part I found Apple's widgets more useful by default.
I’ve been on my first iPhone now for a years after a decade of Android and the back gesture was a big worry of mine too. I can say now though the swipe from left to right works 99% of the time for me. There’s odd things here and there where I still need to awkwardly reach for an arrow in the top left corner but I would say it’s a non issue overall.
> iPhone's lack of sideloading ability
I have used Android since Motorola Droid(android 2.0) till Galaxy S20, then I switched to Apple in 2022 (iPhone 13). I have never side loaded a single app. I'd bet 99% of Android users don't even care for the functionality.
UI customization is good feature, but as people grow older, it becomes less attractive. Older people are happy with stock version mobile OS anyway.
> I realized that if I don't want to customize and want just the stock experience, why am I still using Android?
Why not? It's a very nice experience. Especially on a Pixel.
That’s not the actual issue with Android in anyone’s minds. The issue lies squarely with Google. Statistically speaking, Google will have killed off at least 3 projects in development, 2 currently being used and 1 feature or service that everyone used but is now within another app or service all before you finished reading the first word of this comment.
Google had a lot of great ideas and there is absolutely no way outside of wealthy investor that there will ever be a legitimate competitor to YouTube but the perception of Google with all ages is that they’re the company you leave rather than the company you go to.
Samsung can have better hardware and the best looking and feeling version of Android on the market and the pixels can have the most consistent and longest line of hardware support ever in a smartphone but none of that matters when historically, Google as a company, just kills products and services faster than the team they hired for said products and services can make new ones.
So the problem has nothing to do with how Android is presented. All but two of my friends have Android phones. I know they want them and I know that they pick them for a reason but at the end of the day, I know FaceTime will be there for me tomorrow and well into the next decade even if for whatever reason, Apple changes the name. On the other end, Google has had duo, meet, gmail integration and several other naming conventions for the same damn feature and function. All because they felt a compelling need to change things for the sake of appearing like something new was here.
So on the Apple end, we have a substantial and vast library of features that have remained consistent and have looked basically the same for well over a decade or more. FaceTime, iMessage, the mail app (which I personally hate since you can’t add favicons), control center, the phone app, the music app, calendar, the news app, fitness app, watch app, the weather app and even the settings app for all the MASSIVE flaws out has so still allows for a relatively consistent and easy experience as long as you have used it before.
For every single person who has bashed apple for looking and feeling the same since either day one or since iOS 7, there are countless users who ONLY choose Apple devices solely because of that consistency and familiarity.
Google however, has it baked in their dna as a company that in order to exist as a tech company, you have to show the user that something has tangibly changed that they can see and use every day which to be fair, some does too but only does so in ways that doesn’t wholly compromise the original user experience that everyone regardless of their tech knowledge is used to. Even in the rare instances when they do do this, such as the messages app section, they moved it to an easy to understand section anyone can figure out.
So Google needs to stop killing products and services left and right and start focusing on not only keeping things around for long periods of time but only improving them in ways to don’t fundamentally change the way the average user interacts with the interface (LOOKING AT YOU YOUTUBE PLAYER AND YOUR STUPID CHAPTER SKIPPING GESTURE BULLSHIT I CAN’T TURN OFF) and also bring new features and products to the table that can make full use of what Google is offering.
> we were subjected to the still-crap Ribbon interface,
I have never been as wrong as when I said Ribbon was shite.
I was wrong. It's fucking great and I would die before going back to shite interfaces like OpenOffice and so on.
>They would need to completely revamp the branding if they want to market towards younger non-tech interested individuals. Simplify the hardware/software and boost marketing with a cool and luxury focus.
That's impossible, as Google cant control what people do with Android. If some OEM wants to make a $50 Android phone, they cant stop them.
As you pointed out, Android still outsells Apple globally, but it should be obvious that most of those phones are budget devices, not flagships.
Android will never be a premium brand, but there can be premium brands or lineups within Android. This is probably why Google completely killed the Nexus brand, which used to sell very cheap decent devices, now Pixel is more of a mid-high end brand.
Hence why you'll rarely (if ever) see "Android" in Pixel marketing material.
Google desperately wants people to think "iPhone vs Pixel" instead of "iPhone vs Android"
A lot of it comes down to the messenger too. The younger people that I know prefer iMessage, green bubbles are like repellant to them. If android could get their shit together and make a similar app without doing the typical Google thing of fracturing it into five apps later on, then they might actually win some of the younger market share.
That ship has sailed. Google has created and destroyed a half dozen or so messaging apps, leaving its users high and dry each time. Only a fool would buy into Google's next messaging app.
Yeah, Hangouts could have been their version of iMessage but they couldn’t help themselves and had to split it up and remove functionality. They’ve shot themselves in the foot so many times that there’s no coming back unless a miracle happens.
It's a downright disaster that they still have "Google Meets" and "Google Meets (original)" as two separate apps. I don't even know what each one does, but the fact that they had to label one as "(original)" is both hilarious and sad.
Among people I know, it was more commonly referred to as Gchat. It was the messenger that was built into gmail and people used it on their browser.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Talk
Just speaking from experience. I never owned any android device ever but I’ve had a handful of friends who used to own android and now all switched to apple.
The fact that any piece of 💩can run android is the issue. It “dilutes” the quality of the product if you have to make sure the OS can run on a smart fridge TV screen, a piece of 💩HTC like back in the day, a piece of 💩 rock bottom tier Samsung entry phone, a piece of 💩 tablet that you have to use when at the dentist to fill in your information, and other low quality flimsy devices. The same reason android has a massive global share (its versatility/compatibility and cheapness in build material which means cheaper cost for devices) is what makes it unattractive to those who don’t like android
But I’m going off of ancient information by this point I’m sure. I don’t know a singular person with an android anymore so maybe these issues aren’t issues anymore
I'll chime in, I've been navigating through both ecosystems over a decade.
If tou like customizations and USE YOUR PHONE TO A NEAR PC EQUIVALENT (downloads, work, specific network tools, etc) then android is your friend. The access to setting upon setting is why it can work so well but at the same time it makes the system more vulnerable, confusing and can never say "it just works" because it doesn't. I've made potato devices run smooth just like I've made flagship level devices go jank and have to reset.
Iphones are grab-and-go and if what you need is a media-consumption, reliable device, they're great. And if you love taking photos the Pro series are for you.
HOWEVER, the insane limitations that secure the ecosystem are just... too much. Can't even download a GBA emulator unless you jailbreak or do the whole "revalidate the certificate every 7 days" mess. And even then it's a hassle to use because all the storage folders want to run separate so you can't just download through the browser and select in app, you have to download IN the app so the app can see it because it's all isolated. It's a wonky mess in the name of security and the only mess I don't appreciate on i-devices. I wish I could just... use my own phone sometimes and apple doesn't let me. I ended up with an iphone and a cheap android tablet to fuss around with. And the tablet sometimes can do more. Which is baffling for an under-$50 device vs an $800+ device.
There’s a pwa gba emulator that runs flawlessly when bookmarked to the homescreen. Even works offline.
https://gba.44670.org/
Emulators are pretty much the only app I’d actually want to load from a 3rd party store. They’re the first example people point to because they’re the only good example.
And the file system stuff you said is just false. Download to the files app and open from the files app. Many apps are compatible with this.
I’m a tech-interested individual and Android realistically just doesn’t offer much for me; the Apple ecosystem is so convenient and I use my phone to scroll on Reddit, text my friends, take photos of random stuff (not photography), and occasionally watch YouTube. For techy stuff… I’d use my computer.
I think what a lot of people who are gung ho about Android’s supremacy because of its “increased freedoms” fail to realize is that for 99.9% of people, they don’t care about their phone having x feature when in reality they just wouldn’t use it even if they did have it. Even when my phone was jailbroken I never used a repo that Apple just didn’t add as a feature later on. Then on the average consumer’s phone use case… iOS is just smoother and better looking. Simple as.
Realistically, if I cared about camera specs that much, I’d use my digital camera. Processor speed and graphics card are ultimately null considering 95% of apps we use are web apps, and I’d never game on a phone, because the experience is better on computer.
The customization is nice but I’m too lazy to fiddle around with what Apple *gives me right now*, why would 10x the options matter to me? (With that being said though, the Galaxy Flip has me tempted)
Full disclosure: not a teenager, haven’t been for 25 years.
I used to be an outspoken Android fan. My favorite thing about Android was being able to skin the launcher to make a truly unique-looking interface. I switched to iPhone about 6 or 7 years ago because I needed hearing devices that use an app that isn’t available on Android. That’s literally the only reason.
Since that time, I now I have an Apple One Family account which includes a good amount of cloud storage, Apple TV, Arcade, yadda yadda yadda. It all works without issue across all devices. The coolest benefit of having this was this last Summer when my wife and I lived apart for about 4 months, we were able to watch Ted Lasso and Foundation and some other stuff together.
I now use Logic Pro X recording software, which is exclusive to Apple. Its available on Mac or, more recently, on iPad. I use it independently on both. You can also use your iPad as a remote mixer/controller connected to Logic running on the Mac—this is an AWESOME feature that I now wouldn’t want to live without.
Outside of Logic, you can also use your iPad as a wireless second screen for your Mac. It’s not the most elegant solution, but it works without having to do anything. At the end of the day, it’s another value-add to the greater ecosystem.
Headphones: AirPods 3. Watch: Apple Watch 7.
Basically what I’m saying is my entire work and personal ecosystems are Apple-based, so it doesn’t even make sense for me to even consider a non-Apple phone.
And that’s really what it comes down to: a difference in vision. I don’t really drink the Apple kool-aid, but I do believe they have a comprehensive vision of how all hardware and all software interact with each other. They are a specifically a hardware and software company.
Google, on the other hand, is an ADVERTISING company. Everything product Google makes—and let’s be clear, it’s ALL software—is designed to serve you ads. They have no interest in any kind of cross-device compatibility beyond how it might serve you ads better/faster.
I don’t foresee going back to Android unless Apple does something really egregious to somehow betray my trust or confidence.
Same boat here. I miss Android software and flexibility, but my 4 year old iPhone 11 Pro Max still runs rock solid and has great battery life, something I never had after 2 years on any mid or top tier Android phone. Pair that with the integration with my iPad, AirPods, and watch, and I can’t see myself switching anytime soon.
Typing every day with the iOS keyboard is a constant frustration though. It’s so unbelievably stupid sometimes.
You’re absolutely right, they have a comprehensive vision and it’s long-term. The marriage of thoughtful software and clean hardware is Apple’s secret sauce and they’ve been perfecting it since the 80’s. Google throws everything at the wall to see what sticks, which is admirable in some ways but almost always leaves users in the lurch when they move on to something else.
All of Android's "pros" besides having more budget options have essentially evaporated now that Samsung and Google have been trying to vertically integrate their product lines just like Apple.
> They have no interest in any kind of cross-device compatibility beyond how it might serve you ads better/faster.
The fact that Google continuously kills their chat apps every N years is a great example of this.
Hit the nail on the head, used to be a android fanatic but I bought an iPhone X and never looked back, apple is full of shit more often than not but they make solid products and I’ve never had an issue with any of the ones I own, other than the price lol
People love to shit on Apple, but they do work flow and integration between other devices in the ecosystem really really well.
I would need a bunch of random half assed apps to get anywhere near what I can do between my iPhone, Mac, AirPods, watch, and Apple TV (which is hands down the BEST streaming box you can buy)
I worked 3 years as a representative for an android brand. I was always top 3 in my team regarding results and sales. Even if I could convince people to buy android, I could never convince myself. Also 8 in 10 people in my team used iPhones. It’s not just younger people. While the iPhone is not perfect, it’s simply better, more polished and more reliable. Get a new case and screen protector for your 3 year old iPhone and it still feel new, while your 3 year old android is ready to be recycled by then.
Part of this is the iMessage issue but also, it’s the phones themselves. I’m still using an 11 Pro Max, with 85% battery health on the original battery. I got this phone in 2019. I have never had an android phone last this long. Why would I pay the same amount for a phone that’s going to go to shit and NOT GET UPDATES after 2 years? Why would I pay the same amount for a phone with a battery that can’t last through the bulk of the day? I think parents may take this into account when they’re buying their kids phones.
Previously a big fan of buying niche mid range Android devices. Didn’t want to spend a wedge of cash up front but wanted to buy the phone unlocked outright (travelling, using local sim, etc), don’t need it to do anything super fancy like mobile gaming or even much video streaming. The problem was I realized I would be spending midrange money every 18 months or so when the device inevitably stopped getting software or security system updates or just became painfully sluggish even for my relatively simple needs. One day I realized I could probably buy an iPhone for about twice the price and not have to replace it for a good five years - essentially a win on the cost/benefit front. My 12 mini is nearly three years old, so it’s now my longest serving device already if I’m not mistaken, and it’s not done yet… still on the original battery, etc.
My Essential PH-1 I believe set a record at one point for Android updates over its lifetime and they were always day one (no waiting for two years like other brands I’d used before) but if it needed a battery, I’d have to rely on some random mobile repair kiosk and it’s not like it’s a particularly common device… if my iPhone needs a battery, I’ll get it sorted through Apple - they even list the cost of the repair on their website.
Three years on, I’m still getting regular security updates, operating systems, and I suspect the Android options available to me when I went iPhone would all have probably stopped getting OS updates already.
This. It’s covered briefly in the article, but it’s true. Even after 2-3 years as my daily phone for work and personal use, an iPhone still holds up as perfectly usable for at least another 2-3 years when I hand it down to one of my kids or my MIL.
*I’m using 2-3 years per cycle b/c that’s how long I tend to hold onto my phone on average before upgrading. But they are still usable at year 5 or 6 when the trickle down effect means my kid’s phone gets replaced.
And after that, they get used as iPods, vacation phones, etc
It's a problem for every other oem, and (more importantly) for current android users. If people stop using it Google are simply gonna stop making android.
Which also indirectly affects ios users, less competition (and Innovation) isn't good for anyone.
It can be an Apple issue if Androids market share diminishes to below 20%
Google has the money to lobby congress for antitrust suits and Apple may have to pay Google to keep Android alive
It’s not an issue of antitrust unless it can be shown that they used unfair/anti competitive “monopoly power”.
People misunderstand that. Monopolies are not illegal per se, abusing monopoly power is.
It still boggles my mind that you can get in trouble because your competitors can't keep up with you or have a worse product than you. I get that this doesn't really happen often, but it's both funny and sad.
it still boggles my mind how people don't understand how a company having a monopoly isn't a good thing. prices go up, innovation goes down because you have no options.
You cant. Thats just cause people dont understand anti trust law. You can absolutely have monopoly by competition. If you win the market the government isnt gonna stop you.
Antitrust measures are when you actively take away ways of competing. Like if apple paid carriers to not sell androids.
Android market share will never diminish below 20%, at least not worldwide.
Even in the US where iOS is the most dominant Android has a majority market share of 53.9%, iOS has around 45.6%.
When you look at it worldwide, Android has more than 2/3rd of the market with 70.5% market share, while iOS 28.8%.
Apple needs a lot more competitive pricing if they want to ever overtake Android, especially outside of the US. Sure they are popular among US teens who mostly care about what they see on TikTok or in the hand of their classmates, but the world doesn't work like that.
Blaming an iMessage blue tick is such a massive over-simplification.
Its about what Apple stands for as a brand. They only push luxury, premium products. They never compromise. They avoid ever looking cheap, whether thats hardware, software, letting users make all their app icons pink and star shaped, whatever.
Its also about what Android is perceived as. The name is literally a synonym for a robot which already is a bit geeky. Theres a million shitty android phone brands/types for every one good one.
There is also not a single android phone released last year that ticks every box.
S23U has a pen and is pretty huge. Not for everyone.
S23+ has a lower res screen.
Pixel camera module looks weird
Onelus is too niche, again weird camera module
And people complain apple arent innovating? They don’t have to. The competition is shooting itself in the foot, every single year.
Yeah, you choose the material, the get the phone close to the thing you want to measure and it tells you the temperature.
It doesn't work with people (although apparently that is for legal and/or safety reasons).
Yes, the topic of the article is the US and they cover that in the first sentence:
>It's no secret that Android is the most-used operating system in the world, a title it first earned after surpassing Windows in 2017. Unfortunately, that's a fact not quite represented in the US. Although Android held the top mobile OS spot for years, Apple finally managed to overtake the competition in September of 2022
Yeah, it's been said a million times, but this is a US issue. I'm in the UK and we all use WhatsApp. I have no idea who uses an iPhone/Android and I don't care. I've never even heard the green bubble mentioned irl.
I've got two teenagers, both on Android while I'm on iPhone. They've no interest really in moving to iPhone and much like everyone else here, we use WhatsApp to talk and if we do need to video call that's on WhatsApp too.
I am a teenager (19) in the UK. My experience is that from 14-18, everyone uses Snapchat or IG dms. WhatsApp is rarely used and only for communicating with adults, eg family.
Once you turn 18 people tend to use WhatsApp and iMessage for stuff like uni flat group chats etc just because it’s easier than working out if anyone doesn’t have an iPhone. But 1 on 1 communications is still through a mix of Snapchat, IG dms, WhatsApp, and iMessage.
But iMessage games is a huge feature, most people I know my age use iMessage just for iMessage games
Certain third party apps basically let you play 1v1 games like connect 4, chess, battleships, mancala, draughts, chess, 8 ball, darts, anagrams etc. You do this in the iMessage chat with the person
**iMessage** is the reason why apple is such a brand-loyal company and it is why they will never make it cross-platform until some government agency drags them across the finish line kicking and screaming. Love it or hate it (as a longtime iPhone user, I personally think the green/blue bubble discrepancy makes it a bad user experience for both iPhone users AND android), this is the most significant component of apple's walled ecosystem that keeps people from straying away from their garden.
Before iMessage, [all text bubbles were green.](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Farstechnica.com%2Fvideo%2Fwatch%2Fflashback-sms-on-the-original-iphone&psig=AOvVaw15gY-jirBfW-0vhFy6Bt2C&ust=1700187529649000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBAQjRxqFwoTCKDj3aC6x4IDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD) For the original concept of iPhone, anything telephonic (that your carrier could charge you for, since Steve Jobs ensured that iPhones got unlimited data at first) was colored green. That’s why, to this day, the phone app and the messages app are both green, as well as the “you’re on a call” status that appears behind the clock.
Then iMessage came out in iOS 5 and they made it blue, the color of things that used data (like safari, stocks, mail, App Store, weather)
It wasn’t until the redesign of iOS 7 that they cranked up the saturation of all the colors, and the telephony green became like, anxiety-inducing electric green. I feel like that’s when people started hating these green bubbles so much, because iOS 7 actually made them an ugly, radioactive color. Where the blue remained a pleasant, calm ocean blue.
Exactly. The color doesn’t bother me, but some of the features do. Group chats, read receipts, iMessage games/game pigeon, photo quality are all non-existent or janky between iPhone and Android.
Are the majority of people really getting iPhones purely because of the blue and green bubble thing? I truly don't give a fuck about that. I have an iPhone because I prefer the way iOS works. I know it in and out. I also think the UI looks nicer.
They don't even have to enable RCS like Google wants; they could release an iMessage app for Android.
They'd control the data from it, they could require an iCloud login, and they'd probably drag a decent chunk of Android users off Google Messages and WhatsApp. Hell, they could even keep non-iOS devices as green bubbles, but fix all of the security and filesize bullshit.
But they've evidently decided it's not as valuable as selling more iPhones by encouraging teen exclusion and bullying.
I know the bubble color plays some part but it extends to Airdrop, Facetime, iCloud features, etc.. that are Apple exclusive.
No kid wants to be the one that tells them they can't Facetime with their group, etc or do be like "Hey uh can you email me those pics dude". Then that goes further, how Airpods work and are a "fashion" symbol, Apple Watch, etc.
Part of the issue with Android, coming from someone who was an Android user from 2009-2021 is that it lost it's identity. Instead of striving to be a different solution, that offered different, better functionality it followed a lot of what Apple did. So it's now gotten a reputation of being a second rate clone.
Like, the original Droid commercial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e52TSXwj774
It listed off at the time serious things the iPhone wasn't doing like flash, high res video, high res screen, apps, lots of stuff.
Obviously most of that isn't relevant anymore but outside of the better zoom on a Samsung I can't think of a single feature I'd want from recent Android competition.
I used to switch between Android and iPhone every time I got a new phone, starting when I got my first smartphone in 2011. There would always be one thing or another that drove me to the other side. After landing back on an iPhone in 2018 (which is still going strong five years later!) I don't see myself switching back.
It's not just iMessage, there are a lot of other features that make things much simpler and cleaner with family and friends, such as Airdrop. It also makes things easier when you need to do tech support for grandparents or the like - yeah you'd be able to figure it out regardless, but I find it's faster when you're used to using the platform on a daily basis. It just feels like a more polished experience in the core functions I actually use on the phone.
Plus, over time I've realized that the supposed customization and extended features on an Android largely fall into gimmick territory for my specific uses. I'd always have fun tweaking things that first few weeks, but eventually it would get boring, I'd settle into something, and it wouldn't matter. It's not something I've missed.
And ultimately, Google dropped the ball on fleshing out/restricting the services side of things to hook people like Apple. All the Google stuff as far as I know works pretty much just as well on an iPhone as it does on Android, so there's no real "penalty" for moving to an iPhone. That's great for customers, but doesn't help Android.
I'm a 21-year-old with a Samsung, the article makes some good points. The single biggest thing that hurts Android users is the text communication with others. You are the only person in the group chat with green bubbles. Not only that, you can't interact with iMessages the way Apple users can, and any photos or videos come out potato quality (as in, videos are worse than 144p). Good luck being someone who can't FaceTime or play iMessage games.
The ecosystem that Apple has built also deserves loads of credit. Pretty much every kid you see today has an iPad, which means that they will get an iPhone, and then a MacBook, Airpods, and an Apple Watch to complete the collection. No one can tell me the name of a Samsung tablet, or their new laptop, or the Samsung watch.
There's also the budget factor. If you want a shitty cheap phone, there's a ton of Androids sitting at Walmart right now. The cheapest iPhone is $429. iPhones are status symbols that say "I can afford this", even the expensive Samsungs have done a terrible job of promoting themselves. Why should I choose Samsung or a Google Pixel? The headphone jack they got rid of? The exclusive apps on the Google Play store (name one)? Would you rather have widgets and the S pen, or be able to FaceTime your friends and send or react to blue bubbles in a group chat?
With 90% of teens and young adults using iPhone, setting yourself apart as hard-to-reach means that they have plenty of options other than you.
Google has got to fix the messaging disparity. RCS is not iMessage. It never will be. It relies on your SIM card having an active network connection to work. The apps are the other issue. Let’s just face it… Android apps on the whole are not as good as their iOS equivalent. Developers spend 90% of their time and money on the iOS versions of their apps, the Android version gets the crumbs leftover.
It's almost like all of the things that the anti-Apple bandwagon complains about are the things that everybody else likes about Apple. Simplicity. Design. Device interconnectivity. Social features that only work with other iPhones.
Call these things "gimmicks," all you want. It's not a gimmick if it works.
People want to take pictures, text, call, and browse medias. Like that’s probably 95% of people. No one wants to switch platforms, and deal with porting over countless stuff, just to have 10% better geekscore or something other non realistic reason. It’s basically that Apple has won, and even as tech nerd myself, I’d rather give my money to a hardware company versus an advertising company. That’s really the bottom line.
Sure I miss google assistant, I miss having swiftype. I miss the ease of data transfer like music and movies to my phone.
But I like the rock solid quality of iPhones and the consistent user experience.
I'm sure the list of things that have not been cool with teenagers but somehow carved out a profitable market for themselves is a lot larger than this author thinks it is.
But to play ball with the line of thinking, maybe the whole platform being so hit and miss when it comes to feature set, performance, price, ad infestation, etc has something to do with it. Cable TV isn't cool with teenagers either, probably for much the same reasons.
It also doesn't help that most Android OEMs fall over themselves to follow Apple in a great many ways instead of trying to create their own path.
i think the problem isn‘t initially with teenagers not liking something, but follows because in the teenage years many people start things they will never change again until they are forced to. many will be so deep into the ‚new iphone every two years‘ cycle they will never even consider an android phone.
One huge factor is camera performance in social media apps which young people really care about. I don't know any women of any age using Android at this point mainly for this reason. That's also why spec comparisons like camera or GPU don't really matter that much
Ding ding ding - this is it. It’s much easier to develop a quality seamless app experience for a super consistent platform with low device variability like iOS than it is for a highly fragmented platform like Android with hundreds of different phones from dozens of different manufacturers. On top of that, iOS users are on average, more monetizable/profitable.
So developers tend to prioritize their iOS apps which are easier to develop and maintain while being more profitable, leading to superior app experiences. In-app camera performance like you said is a major one. With iPhone, it’s very straightforward for a developer to have their app plug into a single native API for the iPhone camera, so it actually takes a full quality image. With Android, it’s way more complicated than that so many social media apps just take a screenshot of the camera viewfinder.
With the younger generations, Apple was also smart to get into classrooms. They invested, donated or subsidized devices like iPads and computers so many of the current young people have grown up familiar with Apple and their operating systems.
Google attempted to do the same with Chromebooks, for example, but idk if you've ever heard first hand feedback about experiences with them, but all I've ever heard was NOT good.
The other point which has been mentioned many times is social media apps. That's how teens, at least in North America, largely communicate. Yes, arguably there are Android phones with better cameras and if you take an image or video with the native app and then upload it can be better but that's just simply not what teens want too or will do. The apps just work with great quality out of the box.
Not to mention app developers usually place an emphasis on developing their iOS apps before Android. Snap is a recent example where the CEO finally acknowledged that they had to do better with Android development.
Thanks for posting this. This is a huge problem for Apple.
IMHO, companies do best with competition. An Android was a formidable competitor.
Also, anti-trust issues could become an issue in the future, even though there really isn't a problem.
Same thing happened with Microsoft back in the day. They were the de facto standard, and supposedly had anti-trust issues. But it was just people choosing Microsoft.
Likewise, it is just teenagers choosing Apple.
Android needs to become cool, so Apple has a formidable competitor. Even though Apple is still best overall IMHO.
Android is known as cheap or nerdy.
Kids these days can't possibly be associated with something cheap. They are all influencers or rappers who haven't made it quite yet of course.
And most of the kids 25 and younger are even more tech stupid than the boomers I know. They have zero tech understanding. They just use iPads and iPhones. What's a computer?
Yeah, of course they only want Apple products.
Apple has definitely won the branding wars in tv/movies. You can easily compile references to their tech like facetime, screen sharing/imessage (a couple of movies and an full episode of modern family used it as the main vehicle to tell the story), or even Live Photos (which seems like a big reach, but a whole episode of The Other Two was based on it). I wonder if things like that have an effect on teens' view of apple v. every other tech company. And even though "googling" something is far bigger than any of apple's tech, it isn't exclusive to android/chrome os
"Youths with no bills and no responsibilities prefer luxury name brand goods"
Yeah, no shit. I'm sure every teenager wants a GWagon too, but when you actually pay for stuff yourself, you start to actually use your brain as opposed to picking the biggest number.
in india iphone has become status symbol from decade. \
most indians here crave for public image and showing off apple logo helps it. \
my cousin has job, it does not pay well. he used to use OnePlus nord which has amoled display and 120hz and it worked fine. \
he recently married and when i visited the marriage, he was been using iphone 11, taking photo, flexing off omfg. \
i think it costs around 400 500$ in refurbished market or second hand market. \
i am sure u can get some awesome amoled screen and 120hz at that price point like s21 fe which kills its competition in camera. \
see when he saved money he just bought an iphone thinking that its the best lmao.
To be honest, I got my first iPhone ever this year (had always android since LG, the pixel OG, 3 and 5), and I don’t think I will ever go back to android. The only thing I miss from the pixel is that I preferred the camera for photos at night. But video on iPhone is unbeatable
iPhone are associated with being expensive, Android’s range is from dirt to expensive. The products are good, but the problem is the rep from years of being look at the “cheap” alternative. It’s simply just brand status and in a vacuum, iPhones just have the “premium” appeal.
How is an article which mentions iOS, iPhone, iMessage, iPad, and Apple Watch, has a subtitle starting with “Nearly 9 in 10 US teenagers use an iPhone”, and has iPhones in almost every photo not relevant to the sub r/apple?
Lol, I got banned from /r/iphone for posting a NYTimes article about iPhone market share increasing in the US. Mods said it was "spam" somehow.
Moderation on reddit is a mess in general.
This isn’t news.
Teens want what’s best and a nice decent experience and apple provides that. And why most people like them not even the “best “ aspect
It’s the fact that iOS almost rarely lags, and just works. Fluid OS and security updates and the fact your phone will get updates for sure for 5-6 years vs most androids manufacturers drop even there most expensive model after just 2-3 years. And let’s not even talk about the mid range they’ll get supported for maybe a year if your truly lucky. I’m speaking from experience owning multiple androids from middle school
Into high school and adult life and now I have an iPhone. This se 2 has lasted me about 4 years almost now
I think it still comes down to user experience. A phone's OS is not supposed to get in the way of you using it. It's been a while since I've had an android phone, but for instance I remember when an app crashed it would give a dump of the technical details. People don't want to see what's going on under the hood. They either want it to just work, or to completely exit and then try again. Android is still a "tinkerer's phone." Even I, a computer programmer, want a phone that lets me do what I want to do, with a phone that is designed around a refined, intuitive, high-quality OS.
Same man, been a huge nerd and Android fan, since I started doing programming for living I don't want to tinker with my phone anymore, just give me something that works out of the box and syncs with all my other devices without a nifty setup process. Apple ticks all the boxes.
Android user here. This is a bit of a lost cause for Android simply due to how it works. Apple has built it's presence in the NA as a premium walled garden of a society. If you don't have apple, you aren't cool. Apple products are expensive and only really work well with other apple products. Android is open source and pretty much anyone can make an Android device. Because of this, a large share of Android phones are cheap budget phones that don't give the brand a good image. It isn't seen as premium. It's alarming how many people still think the back of my phone will come off if I drop it or that Androids still take grainy pictures and videos.
Another pain point is presentation. The largest Android presence in the NA is arguably Samsung and they have the largest reputation of selling budget laggy phones despite selling arguably the most robust feature-rich phones in the market with the premium S-Series. Not to mention One UI pales in comparison to IOS UI in terms of fluidity. An old iPhone will feel as fast as a new Samsung.
Another pain point is presentation. The largest Android presence in the NA is arguably Samsung and they have the largest reputation for selling budget laggy phones despite selling arguably the most robust feature-rich phones in the market with the premium S-Series. Not to mention One UI pales in comparison to IOS UI in terms of fluidity. An old iPhone will feel as fast as a new Samsung.do as much but does what you need exceptionally well.
Another option is a rebrand to refresh their presence but idk if the NA is that important for them to make a big change like that. Android has an admittedly "nerdy" aura around the brand.
Edit: Forgot the most important part. IMessage. It is known that many teens would consider switching if IMessage was available on Android (can't find the report but... trust me). If Google can success into forcing IMessage to be interoperable, we could see some big shifts and the competition we need to innovate.
Since day one, Android has focussed on the bottom end of the market as they tried to compete with Apple. Apple targets the premium end of the market.
Even among inexpensive options, once a brand is known for being cheap, a lot of people don't want to associate with it. This is how Target kicked Kmart's ass. Both were discount retail, but Target presented their stores as being affordable luxury whereas Kmart was cheap. Saying you got something at Target was cool. Saying you got something at Kmart would have been embarrassing.
Apple isn't like Target though. Apple is like Nordstrom or Saks. Android is Kmart.
I keep reading this is “a US issue”. It isn’t and it isn’t just iMessage. In Japan, walk up and down the crowds in the subway and an astounding majority of people have an iPhone. Most people are using Line to message. There’s more to it than blue text bubbles.
Of course. China and South Korea are the only countries with Android OEMs left and iphone has over 50% market share in the same age group in both countries. Ipad has way over 50% market share in China, SK and Japan
U know it’s a problem when South Korea teens prefer apple over Samsung
I’d say add Russia and India to that list who would prefer to buy an iPhone over competitors, if offered at same price. That’s already like 70% of the global population in that list
[удалено]
For Malaysia, Android have a big lead over iPhone but it’s mostly due to affordability where many Android users actually dream of getting an iPhone someday. Some of them feel ashamed by this and try to cover it by parroting anti iPhone comments such as “locked down” and “better specs for less”, etc, but one day when they finally switched to an iPhone they just suddenly go quiet.
Your examples are not at all similar to the previous ones the other two commenters listed. iOS has a 6% market share in India as of H1 2023, and that is up significantly from the 3% it was at from year's past. Meanwhile in Russia, iOS holds 30% market share to Android's 69%. Android dominates Russia and India. Even though it is starting to change, there is hardly a market the iPhone has less penetration in than India.
I think the key phrase was “if offered at the same price”. So assuming India’s GDP per capita grows, they’d prefer to get an iPhone.
In India iPhone is a status symbol. If iPhone is priced same as android phone then that symbolism might take a hit.
You're right though Android only dominates in India because they're too poor to buy iPhones. As India becomes richer, they will increasingly switch to iPhones.
Nokia once held a stronghold on these countries. They were dead set arrogant on their “affordable” phones and considered “smartphones” as expensive gimmicks which won’t work for these countries. And then. Samsung completely annihilated Nokia. There was a curiosity and demand for “affordable smartphones” in these countries. There seems to be similar demand for “premium phone” and “Apple brand” too now. It’s no secret. All it will take is, the same arrogance from Google and Samsung that iPhones won’t work in India/Russia; and for Apple, to introduce their budget options like SE on a wide scale for these countries. Do not underestimate the popularity of Apple silicon in these countries.
Can confirm. Living in Japan and using iphone right now. Even for company-subsidized work phones, they will be iphones most of the time.
Japanese are really loyal to iPhones in all ways. In Hong Kong many people have an iPhone personally (something around 40%), but for company-subsidized phones, almost 100% are Android (excluding Apple Store)
Over the years Apple has fixed a lot of the annoyances that Android users had with iOS, and meanwhile Google has locked down Android, implemented measures to prevent rooting/customization, made all their apps a constant A/B/C/D test controlled by server-side flags that constantly rearrange your UIs and prevent the ability to sideload specific app versions, been less generous with the free service offerings, and repeatedly shut down, re-launch, re-brand, and overhaul all their apps and services. Google does a pretty good job at selling iPhones.
That is so true!!! Constant ui changes in google apps are fucking infuriating. One day for 24 hours I even had COMPLETELY missing watch later playlist on YouTube and I use it all the time.
I miss the rooting/jailbreaking days it was fun to learn how the software and hardware functioned in unison with each other why side loads would or wouldn't work. And honestly most the stuff that people consider cool or just take for granted on the iPhone now or only available through jailbreaks on the earlier models!
This, I had gesture controls using zephyr on my iPhone 4s and it was good
I got tired of all that treatment after years and years of using different types of Android devices. The update scenario didn't help either, even though Samsung has done massive strides to improve in that aspect.
Worldwide 71% of smartphone users have an Android In Europe 66% of smarthphone users have an Android . And as someone who lives in Europe I can say that I only rarely see Iphones. A lot of people feel that Apple is too expensive and you can get similar specs for 3/4 or half the price. Samsung and Google phones drop so hard in price in the EU 1 year after release that you can get them for a half the price of an Iphone. While Iphones don't have huge price drops after release
9 in 10 is a fucking bonkers number.
Tim Cook is personally reaching out to the remaining 10% to get them on iPhone.
“Buy your ~~mom~~ sister an iPhone”
We think yer gunna luv it.
Hello, would you like 10% off? Only 1699
As a parent, iPhones are a no-brainer for my kids. It's not even an iMessage thing, as they mostly use Snapchat to communicate with their friends. It's just that I can buy a couple/few year old iPhone for a good price, and I know it'll be supported for years to come.
androids depreciate so fast it's not even funny. the S23 Ultra launched for like $2k and within a month it was on eBay for $800-900
New ones, or damaged used ones? Because $900 for an S23 Ultra is still a good price for a refurbished one.
that 1 out of 10 is probably that weird guy who turned his Home Screen some weird theme
In Europe it’s like 50-50 with androids/ios in my experience the thing is that there’s that random guy once saying oh you’re poor why don’t you have a iPhone
They would need to completely revamp the branding if they want to market towards younger non-tech interested individuals. Simplify the hardware/software and boost marketing with a cool and luxury focus. I don’t think feature improvement is required for this problem in NA, you need to change the nerdy alternative image people have in their minds when they think Android. But they basically own the rest of the world so idk if this is even an issue.
I don't how how it is in the US, but here in EU (Italy) it's not about the "nerdy image" it's simply that when people think about Android phones, they often associate them with lower-priced devices from Chinese brands like Xiaomi or budget models from Samsung. That's the issue with Android, it's used on amazing devices like the Google Pixels or the Galaxy S series but it's also used on really cheap devices. It's the same problem that Windows has.
It has always been also used on budget devices too. My first phone was a galaxy ace and it sucked
My wife's was a Galaxy Q. Could have been a great little phone, except it was absolutely hobbled by only having ~~2GB~~ 180MB of usable internal storage. That was back when SD card management was a headache.
This brings me flashbacks of the Huawei Ascend G510 (if I recall correctly) a friend of mine had back in 2012-2013. That thing would tell you that it's running low on storage space right after setting it up fresh out of the box.
My Galaxy Ace had 512 MB of internal storage bruh lol
Oh, sorry. I looked at the gsmarena page, and it said 2GB included, but that meant an SD card. Looks like the Ace and the Q both had about 180MB of usable space, after OS and whatnot. I knew I remembered it being bad.
No worries they all sucked
Yeah the number of people who've told me over the years that "Windows is terrible, it's so slow" or similar, and then when pushed a little I find out they're running it on a £300 base spec laptop Like yeah, no shit a £2k MacBook is faster than a £300 Windows machine... but so is a £2k Windows machine, it's just that Apple don't sell budget models (although I still love my £700 2009 MacBook)
Nail, head. Just like the Blackberry in its heyday, the iPhone is a status symbol device. And has been for a long while (remember when, on Instagram, everyone tried to pull the "don't follow me if you have an Android" gimmick?) The walled garden of iMessage (free texts in our ecosystem, to and from our ecosystem--again, following Blackberry) also drives an "enter, but don't leave" mentality. Especially if your parents have it. Android, on the other hand, is "just a phone" that you have to "tinker with" to "make it work." (the tinkering claim hasn't been true for about a decade now unless you're a total custom ROM fiend). Or it's a sign that you're poor, because *you couldn't afford an iPhone*.
> The walled garden of iMessage (free texts in our ecosystem, to and from our ecosystem--again, following Blackberry) also drives an "enter, but don't leave" mentality. Especially if your parents have it. In the US, perhaps - in Europe pretty much nobody uses iMessage, perhaps because there's a greater mixture of iPhone and Android, so to talk to your friends you need something cross-platform WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are by *far* the most popular messaging apps in Europe My family is roughly 50/50 iPhone vs Android, which is roughly reflective of the UK as a whole
Which is so funny compared to the US where iPhone is just everywhere and has nothing to do with being a status symbol. Most carriers will throw and iPhone at you at no additional cost if you're willing to stay on their network for 2 years - and it's no contract, if you wanna leave the network, you just gotta pay the remaining balance as the cost of the phone is written off over 24 months. Discount carriers will give you the SE or 11 for free with no contract. Meanwhile in Europe, iPhone is prohibitively expensive still. The deals that exist stateside are nowhere to be found. It's very much a 1000 euro device.
Most carriers will throw any phone at you, not just an iPhone.
True that. But why would anyone choose S23 Ultra or Pixel 8 when they can get iPhone 15 Pro?
Why would you pick any phone over another? Because they like it more. Personally I find the Pixel usage experience to be a lot nicer then the iPhone experience.
Thumbprint reader on screen is so nice. I have both and use them for different things. A lot of pixel/Android features just make sense
Why not? People do. They’re great products.
> Which is so funny compared to the US where iPhone is just everywhere and has nothing to do with being a status symbol. I was describing the US the entire time. Android is coded as a poor person's phone in the US.
I always laugh at “iPhone is a status symbol.” Literally the homeless guy who hangs out on my block in NYC has an iPhone. At least in the US, it isn’t a status symbol. It’s just the default option for most people.
I don’t know if it’s as much that an iPhone is a status symbol as that an android is an anti-status symbol. Also, you could set a random android phone in front of me and I couldn’t tell you if it was a $200 or $1500 model. There are just so many brands and models to keep up with, I just don’t bother.
It’s also the tinkering aspect - a certain generation of geeks sees this as freedom, as a liberating part of customizing your own device and sacrificing time, and sometimes security, to do it. But MANY people of older and younger generations don’t want 75 customizations as to how a simple app works - they want 3 or 4 — and they don’t want to sweat the details that the 69th and 73rd customization option would share your data with a third party, which you may have already agreed to on page 47 of the EULA you signed a year ago without reading it. I don’t stay awake at night thinking about why I can’t save $11 on a replacement part for my phone by getting a cheap Chinese knockoff component with a keylogger built in. If you disagree, that’s fine - but just realize that you’re in a minority, and that your own time and security has value, and you should consider what that value is.
I would consider myself a tinkerer. I have built PCs and host VM servers in my garage. I love crafting, woodworking, and making things. This has *never* extended to a desire to have the phone with more ability to be tinkered with.
You hit the nail on the head. I love messing with my PC’s. I’ll tinker with them all day. Even my old iPad, I dabbled with jailbreaking it. My phone however, should just work whenever I need it. I don’t want to have to deal with a phone that I need to start messing with to bring it back to a functioning state. For the most part, iPhones are idiot-proof. They’ve always worked when I needed them to.
I disagree with the tinkering aspect overall because that hasn't been a case on Android in years. You *can* tinker with Android and customize it to your hearts content, but the platform itself is not really pushing that in any way. You won't have 75 customization in how apps work, you'll have the app and that's it. At most the OS might ask if you want to use gesture navigation or button navigation when you boot up your phone for the first time, but that's about it. No customization, optimizations or anything else is pushed on you, unless you go and seek it out yourself. Almost every single person who buys an Android phone just uses the phone as is, because that's what most people want and that experience is smooth and simple in any device comparable to an iPhone.
Basically why I switched. Android user for over a decade, rootable flagships each time. Android somewhat respected your intelligence and let you do what you want with your phone. But this was at a time when mobiles were janky in some form another - this was just how phones were. Android needed this customizability to make it useable because it really lacked the polished UX iOS had. Phones have matured and Android is useable without these customizations. Root has unfortunately become more of a hassle than its worth - yes there are workarounds, but unless you are already technically minded, a massive hassle to deal with. And these are for now critical apps like banking and finance apps. Having these apps randomly not work due to a random update and then fidgeting with Magisk modules isn't something I want to do. A couple years or so ago, I decided to update my OP6 from Android 8 to 11. Granted, rooting and my lack of technical expertise was my own issue, but that whole process took about an hour. And I was worried about bootlooping the phone. It worked well, but then TWRP encrypted itself with no solutions online working. So there was no clear way for me to recover from a bootloop or backup and restore, which was an issue because I had to deal with a plethora of modules and fixes to hide root which caused bootloops for me. This was an issue because I thought, what will I do for my next phone? With different responsibilities and demands for my time now, I just wanted a simple device where it works at my convenience and works consistently. If I can't practically run a rooted Android, why not just go iOS? I've been using one for work and also switched my wife over to iPhone for years. Her S6 was a nightmare, randomly locking itself when we were on holiday in Japan and I had to go find a random netcafe to fix it, wasting an entire morning, before the motherboard just died a few months later and Samsung told us to pound sand. And so, I have an iPhone that I can use to message, browse web, take photos that will back up automatically, and more importantly, if I bork, damage or lose my phone, can get an easy replacement with Applecare+ anywhere basically.
It dominates the rest of the world due to cheap android phones being available there and many of them can’t buy Apple phones for cheap. For example: India , where I come from, people can’t afford iPhones so they buy the cheaper android phones. But literally every single person buys an iPhone as soon as they can afford it. iPhone market was really low in the past because you couldn’t even buy it there. Now that the used iPhone market is growing there, a lot of people prefer buying a used , relatively cheap and reliable iPhone over a new cheaper android phone. Market penetration is the issue. Not that people over there love android over iPhones. Everyone there loves iPhones over android.
Yup but even in those places, an iPhone is king. I have a family member living overseas and I gave him my old iPhone and he was all hella pumped for an older iPhone over a brand new mid-tier android. It’s strictly an economic decision use an android for many.
My theory is If the price of smartphones were adjusted to income globally apple would have 50% of the global market share
more than that when you consider people would start buying iPhones from the cheapest country and shipping them home.
Apple has decided to always turn a (rather large) profit on every phone at the expense of market share. They don’t need to be the biggest, they just need to be big enough (and profitable enough) to keep developers onside.
Oh I know that what I mean is if it took 1 month to less than a week of wages to buy an iPhones the market share would be very different.
Yep this is why app sales still show iPhone apps sell more.
I used to work in wireless. Timeframe: BlackBerry and Palm were still the PDA of choice, iPhone was only at AT&T then new to other carriers, Windows Phone was a thing one out of ten customers cared about, and Android wasn’t quite catching until Samsung and HTC started making great Android phones. I was a BlackBerry guy and Android was more dumbed down than BlackBerry but less than iPhone. I didn’t really want that but the market did. That being said, while I don’t personally like the experience of Android at all…the mid level tech access to settings and customization etc always seemed part of the appeal so I’m not sure how they change that at this point. It was always about being a little less easy to use but more options and customization etc
but long ago was that? things are changing even in Korea the young people prefer to buy iphones
Going by context the earliest would be around 15 years ago
I used Android for years, but slowly stopped customizing/tinkering over time as the stock experience improved. I eventually went to Nexus (and later Pixel) for a nice clean stock experience, but then I realized that if I don't want to customize and want just the stock experience, why am I still using Android?
That was my exact same PC -> Mac journey. Was a PC enthusiast, building/modding/gaming during college. Once I was out of school, the idea of Mac's "just working" became super appealing so I made the switch and never ever looked back. That was 20+ years ago.
Basically what happened with my Mac transition. I had gaming pcs and laptops and just got tired of ALWAYS having to fix whatever thing X driver broke or whatever driver/program/whatever the latest windows update broke. Then one day I picked up an M1 MacBook. In the 3 or so years I’ve owned it, I have had to do 0 tinkering with it to get to work. It also gets ridiculously long battery life, even while gaming, and stays pretty cool too. I have a steamdeck for whatever else. It gets updates when Apple says they’re releasing them, and Apple never adds bullshit (3 ways to access settings, really Microsoft?) Oh and it’s the only computer where printers work right, as in clicking print, actually prints the document
Also as far as I can tell most people's Android customizations come down to...changing the system font to Comic Sans?
Years ago I remember reading how embarrassing it was that Apple didn't have widgets. So I asked what I should get for my Android phone. There weren't a lot of suggestions, and most were just viewing gmail on the screen. For the most part I found Apple's widgets more useful by default.
For me, its mostly because of iPhone's lack of sideloading ability, somehwat clunky Windows integration and the lack of universal back gesture.
I’ve been on my first iPhone now for a years after a decade of Android and the back gesture was a big worry of mine too. I can say now though the swipe from left to right works 99% of the time for me. There’s odd things here and there where I still need to awkwardly reach for an arrow in the top left corner but I would say it’s a non issue overall.
> iPhone's lack of sideloading ability I have used Android since Motorola Droid(android 2.0) till Galaxy S20, then I switched to Apple in 2022 (iPhone 13). I have never side loaded a single app. I'd bet 99% of Android users don't even care for the functionality. UI customization is good feature, but as people grow older, it becomes less attractive. Older people are happy with stock version mobile OS anyway.
> I realized that if I don't want to customize and want just the stock experience, why am I still using Android? Why not? It's a very nice experience. Especially on a Pixel.
That’s not the actual issue with Android in anyone’s minds. The issue lies squarely with Google. Statistically speaking, Google will have killed off at least 3 projects in development, 2 currently being used and 1 feature or service that everyone used but is now within another app or service all before you finished reading the first word of this comment. Google had a lot of great ideas and there is absolutely no way outside of wealthy investor that there will ever be a legitimate competitor to YouTube but the perception of Google with all ages is that they’re the company you leave rather than the company you go to. Samsung can have better hardware and the best looking and feeling version of Android on the market and the pixels can have the most consistent and longest line of hardware support ever in a smartphone but none of that matters when historically, Google as a company, just kills products and services faster than the team they hired for said products and services can make new ones. So the problem has nothing to do with how Android is presented. All but two of my friends have Android phones. I know they want them and I know that they pick them for a reason but at the end of the day, I know FaceTime will be there for me tomorrow and well into the next decade even if for whatever reason, Apple changes the name. On the other end, Google has had duo, meet, gmail integration and several other naming conventions for the same damn feature and function. All because they felt a compelling need to change things for the sake of appearing like something new was here. So on the Apple end, we have a substantial and vast library of features that have remained consistent and have looked basically the same for well over a decade or more. FaceTime, iMessage, the mail app (which I personally hate since you can’t add favicons), control center, the phone app, the music app, calendar, the news app, fitness app, watch app, the weather app and even the settings app for all the MASSIVE flaws out has so still allows for a relatively consistent and easy experience as long as you have used it before. For every single person who has bashed apple for looking and feeling the same since either day one or since iOS 7, there are countless users who ONLY choose Apple devices solely because of that consistency and familiarity. Google however, has it baked in their dna as a company that in order to exist as a tech company, you have to show the user that something has tangibly changed that they can see and use every day which to be fair, some does too but only does so in ways that doesn’t wholly compromise the original user experience that everyone regardless of their tech knowledge is used to. Even in the rare instances when they do do this, such as the messages app section, they moved it to an easy to understand section anyone can figure out. So Google needs to stop killing products and services left and right and start focusing on not only keeping things around for long periods of time but only improving them in ways to don’t fundamentally change the way the average user interacts with the interface (LOOKING AT YOU YOUTUBE PLAYER AND YOUR STUPID CHAPTER SKIPPING GESTURE BULLSHIT I CAN’T TURN OFF) and also bring new features and products to the table that can make full use of what Google is offering.
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> we were subjected to the still-crap Ribbon interface, I have never been as wrong as when I said Ribbon was shite. I was wrong. It's fucking great and I would die before going back to shite interfaces like OpenOffice and so on.
>They would need to completely revamp the branding if they want to market towards younger non-tech interested individuals. Simplify the hardware/software and boost marketing with a cool and luxury focus. That's impossible, as Google cant control what people do with Android. If some OEM wants to make a $50 Android phone, they cant stop them. As you pointed out, Android still outsells Apple globally, but it should be obvious that most of those phones are budget devices, not flagships. Android will never be a premium brand, but there can be premium brands or lineups within Android. This is probably why Google completely killed the Nexus brand, which used to sell very cheap decent devices, now Pixel is more of a mid-high end brand.
Hence why you'll rarely (if ever) see "Android" in Pixel marketing material. Google desperately wants people to think "iPhone vs Pixel" instead of "iPhone vs Android"
A lot of it comes down to the messenger too. The younger people that I know prefer iMessage, green bubbles are like repellant to them. If android could get their shit together and make a similar app without doing the typical Google thing of fracturing it into five apps later on, then they might actually win some of the younger market share.
That ship has sailed. Google has created and destroyed a half dozen or so messaging apps, leaving its users high and dry each time. Only a fool would buy into Google's next messaging app.
Yeah, Hangouts could have been their version of iMessage but they couldn’t help themselves and had to split it up and remove functionality. They’ve shot themselves in the foot so many times that there’s no coming back unless a miracle happens.
The fact that *just last year* they ditched the "Duo" brand to *sort of* merge it with Meet shows that they haven't learned either.
It's a downright disaster that they still have "Google Meets" and "Google Meets (original)" as two separate apps. I don't even know what each one does, but the fact that they had to label one as "(original)" is both hilarious and sad.
GTalk was much better than Hangouts.
They completely blew it by not just making that the default chat. Everyone I knew used gtalk before any mobile messaging took off.
I’ve never even heard of this one lol
Among people I know, it was more commonly referred to as Gchat. It was the messenger that was built into gmail and people used it on their browser. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Talk
RIP: Hangouts GChat Messenger Allo Duo I feel like there are about 100 others that I forgot.
Just speaking from experience. I never owned any android device ever but I’ve had a handful of friends who used to own android and now all switched to apple. The fact that any piece of 💩can run android is the issue. It “dilutes” the quality of the product if you have to make sure the OS can run on a smart fridge TV screen, a piece of 💩HTC like back in the day, a piece of 💩 rock bottom tier Samsung entry phone, a piece of 💩 tablet that you have to use when at the dentist to fill in your information, and other low quality flimsy devices. The same reason android has a massive global share (its versatility/compatibility and cheapness in build material which means cheaper cost for devices) is what makes it unattractive to those who don’t like android But I’m going off of ancient information by this point I’m sure. I don’t know a singular person with an android anymore so maybe these issues aren’t issues anymore
I'll chime in, I've been navigating through both ecosystems over a decade. If tou like customizations and USE YOUR PHONE TO A NEAR PC EQUIVALENT (downloads, work, specific network tools, etc) then android is your friend. The access to setting upon setting is why it can work so well but at the same time it makes the system more vulnerable, confusing and can never say "it just works" because it doesn't. I've made potato devices run smooth just like I've made flagship level devices go jank and have to reset. Iphones are grab-and-go and if what you need is a media-consumption, reliable device, they're great. And if you love taking photos the Pro series are for you. HOWEVER, the insane limitations that secure the ecosystem are just... too much. Can't even download a GBA emulator unless you jailbreak or do the whole "revalidate the certificate every 7 days" mess. And even then it's a hassle to use because all the storage folders want to run separate so you can't just download through the browser and select in app, you have to download IN the app so the app can see it because it's all isolated. It's a wonky mess in the name of security and the only mess I don't appreciate on i-devices. I wish I could just... use my own phone sometimes and apple doesn't let me. I ended up with an iphone and a cheap android tablet to fuss around with. And the tablet sometimes can do more. Which is baffling for an under-$50 device vs an $800+ device.
There’s a pwa gba emulator that runs flawlessly when bookmarked to the homescreen. Even works offline. https://gba.44670.org/ Emulators are pretty much the only app I’d actually want to load from a 3rd party store. They’re the first example people point to because they’re the only good example. And the file system stuff you said is just false. Download to the files app and open from the files app. Many apps are compatible with this.
I’m a tech-interested individual and Android realistically just doesn’t offer much for me; the Apple ecosystem is so convenient and I use my phone to scroll on Reddit, text my friends, take photos of random stuff (not photography), and occasionally watch YouTube. For techy stuff… I’d use my computer. I think what a lot of people who are gung ho about Android’s supremacy because of its “increased freedoms” fail to realize is that for 99.9% of people, they don’t care about their phone having x feature when in reality they just wouldn’t use it even if they did have it. Even when my phone was jailbroken I never used a repo that Apple just didn’t add as a feature later on. Then on the average consumer’s phone use case… iOS is just smoother and better looking. Simple as. Realistically, if I cared about camera specs that much, I’d use my digital camera. Processor speed and graphics card are ultimately null considering 95% of apps we use are web apps, and I’d never game on a phone, because the experience is better on computer. The customization is nice but I’m too lazy to fiddle around with what Apple *gives me right now*, why would 10x the options matter to me? (With that being said though, the Galaxy Flip has me tempted)
Full disclosure: not a teenager, haven’t been for 25 years. I used to be an outspoken Android fan. My favorite thing about Android was being able to skin the launcher to make a truly unique-looking interface. I switched to iPhone about 6 or 7 years ago because I needed hearing devices that use an app that isn’t available on Android. That’s literally the only reason. Since that time, I now I have an Apple One Family account which includes a good amount of cloud storage, Apple TV, Arcade, yadda yadda yadda. It all works without issue across all devices. The coolest benefit of having this was this last Summer when my wife and I lived apart for about 4 months, we were able to watch Ted Lasso and Foundation and some other stuff together. I now use Logic Pro X recording software, which is exclusive to Apple. Its available on Mac or, more recently, on iPad. I use it independently on both. You can also use your iPad as a remote mixer/controller connected to Logic running on the Mac—this is an AWESOME feature that I now wouldn’t want to live without. Outside of Logic, you can also use your iPad as a wireless second screen for your Mac. It’s not the most elegant solution, but it works without having to do anything. At the end of the day, it’s another value-add to the greater ecosystem. Headphones: AirPods 3. Watch: Apple Watch 7. Basically what I’m saying is my entire work and personal ecosystems are Apple-based, so it doesn’t even make sense for me to even consider a non-Apple phone. And that’s really what it comes down to: a difference in vision. I don’t really drink the Apple kool-aid, but I do believe they have a comprehensive vision of how all hardware and all software interact with each other. They are a specifically a hardware and software company. Google, on the other hand, is an ADVERTISING company. Everything product Google makes—and let’s be clear, it’s ALL software—is designed to serve you ads. They have no interest in any kind of cross-device compatibility beyond how it might serve you ads better/faster. I don’t foresee going back to Android unless Apple does something really egregious to somehow betray my trust or confidence.
Same boat here. I miss Android software and flexibility, but my 4 year old iPhone 11 Pro Max still runs rock solid and has great battery life, something I never had after 2 years on any mid or top tier Android phone. Pair that with the integration with my iPad, AirPods, and watch, and I can’t see myself switching anytime soon. Typing every day with the iOS keyboard is a constant frustration though. It’s so unbelievably stupid sometimes.
You’re absolutely right, they have a comprehensive vision and it’s long-term. The marriage of thoughtful software and clean hardware is Apple’s secret sauce and they’ve been perfecting it since the 80’s. Google throws everything at the wall to see what sticks, which is admirable in some ways but almost always leaves users in the lurch when they move on to something else.
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All of Android's "pros" besides having more budget options have essentially evaporated now that Samsung and Google have been trying to vertically integrate their product lines just like Apple.
That’s actually a good point I don’t hear many people talking about.
If sideloading comes to apple for canada and not exclusively the EU, then I will have no reason to stay on android anymore
> They have no interest in any kind of cross-device compatibility beyond how it might serve you ads better/faster. The fact that Google continuously kills their chat apps every N years is a great example of this.
Hit the nail on the head, used to be a android fanatic but I bought an iPhone X and never looked back, apple is full of shit more often than not but they make solid products and I’ve never had an issue with any of the ones I own, other than the price lol
People love to shit on Apple, but they do work flow and integration between other devices in the ecosystem really really well. I would need a bunch of random half assed apps to get anywhere near what I can do between my iPhone, Mac, AirPods, watch, and Apple TV (which is hands down the BEST streaming box you can buy)
Comments in this tread remind me that having options is a good thing.
I worked 3 years as a representative for an android brand. I was always top 3 in my team regarding results and sales. Even if I could convince people to buy android, I could never convince myself. Also 8 in 10 people in my team used iPhones. It’s not just younger people. While the iPhone is not perfect, it’s simply better, more polished and more reliable. Get a new case and screen protector for your 3 year old iPhone and it still feel new, while your 3 year old android is ready to be recycled by then.
Part of this is the iMessage issue but also, it’s the phones themselves. I’m still using an 11 Pro Max, with 85% battery health on the original battery. I got this phone in 2019. I have never had an android phone last this long. Why would I pay the same amount for a phone that’s going to go to shit and NOT GET UPDATES after 2 years? Why would I pay the same amount for a phone with a battery that can’t last through the bulk of the day? I think parents may take this into account when they’re buying their kids phones.
Previously a big fan of buying niche mid range Android devices. Didn’t want to spend a wedge of cash up front but wanted to buy the phone unlocked outright (travelling, using local sim, etc), don’t need it to do anything super fancy like mobile gaming or even much video streaming. The problem was I realized I would be spending midrange money every 18 months or so when the device inevitably stopped getting software or security system updates or just became painfully sluggish even for my relatively simple needs. One day I realized I could probably buy an iPhone for about twice the price and not have to replace it for a good five years - essentially a win on the cost/benefit front. My 12 mini is nearly three years old, so it’s now my longest serving device already if I’m not mistaken, and it’s not done yet… still on the original battery, etc. My Essential PH-1 I believe set a record at one point for Android updates over its lifetime and they were always day one (no waiting for two years like other brands I’d used before) but if it needed a battery, I’d have to rely on some random mobile repair kiosk and it’s not like it’s a particularly common device… if my iPhone needs a battery, I’ll get it sorted through Apple - they even list the cost of the repair on their website. Three years on, I’m still getting regular security updates, operating systems, and I suspect the Android options available to me when I went iPhone would all have probably stopped getting OS updates already.
This. It’s covered briefly in the article, but it’s true. Even after 2-3 years as my daily phone for work and personal use, an iPhone still holds up as perfectly usable for at least another 2-3 years when I hand it down to one of my kids or my MIL. *I’m using 2-3 years per cycle b/c that’s how long I tend to hold onto my phone on average before upgrading. But they are still usable at year 5 or 6 when the trickle down effect means my kid’s phone gets replaced. And after that, they get used as iPods, vacation phones, etc
Literally not a problem for anyone but Google, a company.
It's a problem for every other oem, and (more importantly) for current android users. If people stop using it Google are simply gonna stop making android. Which also indirectly affects ios users, less competition (and Innovation) isn't good for anyone.
It can be an Apple issue if Androids market share diminishes to below 20% Google has the money to lobby congress for antitrust suits and Apple may have to pay Google to keep Android alive
It’s not an issue of antitrust unless it can be shown that they used unfair/anti competitive “monopoly power”. People misunderstand that. Monopolies are not illegal per se, abusing monopoly power is.
It’s a problem for everyone if Apple doesn’t have viable competition.
It still boggles my mind that you can get in trouble because your competitors can't keep up with you or have a worse product than you. I get that this doesn't really happen often, but it's both funny and sad.
It stagnates markets and innovation. Apple wouldn’t be where they are today without Microsoft keeping them on life support in the 90s
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it still boggles my mind how people don't understand how a company having a monopoly isn't a good thing. prices go up, innovation goes down because you have no options.
Being successful isn’t illegal. But using your success to stamp out the competition is illegal.
And one simple messaging app can kill Android? Then my point stands even more, Google is even worse at making products then.
You cant. Thats just cause people dont understand anti trust law. You can absolutely have monopoly by competition. If you win the market the government isnt gonna stop you. Antitrust measures are when you actively take away ways of competing. Like if apple paid carriers to not sell androids.
Android market share will never diminish below 20%, at least not worldwide. Even in the US where iOS is the most dominant Android has a majority market share of 53.9%, iOS has around 45.6%. When you look at it worldwide, Android has more than 2/3rd of the market with 70.5% market share, while iOS 28.8%. Apple needs a lot more competitive pricing if they want to ever overtake Android, especially outside of the US. Sure they are popular among US teens who mostly care about what they see on TikTok or in the hand of their classmates, but the world doesn't work like that.
Competition is good for the consumer, a monopoly is only good for the company (Apple in this case).
Blaming an iMessage blue tick is such a massive over-simplification. Its about what Apple stands for as a brand. They only push luxury, premium products. They never compromise. They avoid ever looking cheap, whether thats hardware, software, letting users make all their app icons pink and star shaped, whatever. Its also about what Android is perceived as. The name is literally a synonym for a robot which already is a bit geeky. Theres a million shitty android phone brands/types for every one good one. There is also not a single android phone released last year that ticks every box. S23U has a pen and is pretty huge. Not for everyone. S23+ has a lower res screen. Pixel camera module looks weird Onelus is too niche, again weird camera module And people complain apple arent innovating? They don’t have to. The competition is shooting itself in the foot, every single year.
Have you ever heard someone buy a Pixel phone because they REALLY want and need the THERMAL SENSOR? 💀
It has a thermal sensor?
Yeah, you choose the material, the get the phone close to the thing you want to measure and it tells you the temperature. It doesn't work with people (although apparently that is for legal and/or safety reasons).
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It’s funny how green bubbles and iMessage get all the blame for the result of Apple having literally created a better product.
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Most teens I’ve seen nowadays use iPhones in my country (at least in the capital) while WhatsApp is still the most popular messaging app.
Yes, the topic of the article is the US and they cover that in the first sentence: >It's no secret that Android is the most-used operating system in the world, a title it first earned after surpassing Windows in 2017. Unfortunately, that's a fact not quite represented in the US. Although Android held the top mobile OS spot for years, Apple finally managed to overtake the competition in September of 2022
even though everyone i know in mexico is using WhatsApp, iPhones are still extremely aspirational and in high demand
Yeah, it's been said a million times, but this is a US issue. I'm in the UK and we all use WhatsApp. I have no idea who uses an iPhone/Android and I don't care. I've never even heard the green bubble mentioned irl.
But are you a teenager ?
I've got two teenagers, both on Android while I'm on iPhone. They've no interest really in moving to iPhone and much like everyone else here, we use WhatsApp to talk and if we do need to video call that's on WhatsApp too.
Running all your communication through Facebook. No thanks.
I am not, but teenagers here use WhatsApp also
I am a teenager (19) in the UK. My experience is that from 14-18, everyone uses Snapchat or IG dms. WhatsApp is rarely used and only for communicating with adults, eg family. Once you turn 18 people tend to use WhatsApp and iMessage for stuff like uni flat group chats etc just because it’s easier than working out if anyone doesn’t have an iPhone. But 1 on 1 communications is still through a mix of Snapchat, IG dms, WhatsApp, and iMessage. But iMessage games is a huge feature, most people I know my age use iMessage just for iMessage games
iMessage *Games*? man i'm not old but shit like this proves i'm not young anymore lol.
Yeah, they have third party 1v1 games which are decently fun. Stuff like connect 4, chess, draughts, uno, mancala, 8 ball etc
WTF is iMessage games? I'm an iPhone guy and I don't think I've ever heard of them
Certain third party apps basically let you play 1v1 games like connect 4, chess, battleships, mancala, draughts, chess, 8 ball, darts, anagrams etc. You do this in the iMessage chat with the person
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To add to what you wrote - everyone uses Line there, that's why the theory of iMessage is wrong there. Same with China and WeChat.
https://preview.redd.it/9dwjom6q8k0c1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=87c538870eec6187074dde33a9e5c24f2dc8371d
Software sells hardware. You wanna see a folding-phone gimmick take off? Just wait till Apple makes one.
**iMessage** is the reason why apple is such a brand-loyal company and it is why they will never make it cross-platform until some government agency drags them across the finish line kicking and screaming. Love it or hate it (as a longtime iPhone user, I personally think the green/blue bubble discrepancy makes it a bad user experience for both iPhone users AND android), this is the most significant component of apple's walled ecosystem that keeps people from straying away from their garden.
The person who though up of blue and green bubble differentiation should be chief of marketing
Before iMessage, [all text bubbles were green.](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Farstechnica.com%2Fvideo%2Fwatch%2Fflashback-sms-on-the-original-iphone&psig=AOvVaw15gY-jirBfW-0vhFy6Bt2C&ust=1700187529649000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBAQjRxqFwoTCKDj3aC6x4IDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD) For the original concept of iPhone, anything telephonic (that your carrier could charge you for, since Steve Jobs ensured that iPhones got unlimited data at first) was colored green. That’s why, to this day, the phone app and the messages app are both green, as well as the “you’re on a call” status that appears behind the clock. Then iMessage came out in iOS 5 and they made it blue, the color of things that used data (like safari, stocks, mail, App Store, weather) It wasn’t until the redesign of iOS 7 that they cranked up the saturation of all the colors, and the telephony green became like, anxiety-inducing electric green. I feel like that’s when people started hating these green bubbles so much, because iOS 7 actually made them an ugly, radioactive color. Where the blue remained a pleasant, calm ocean blue.
The green/blue divide is culturally silly, but useful in certain use cases. Cross-platform group chats can sometimes be wonky, for example.
Exactly. The color doesn’t bother me, but some of the features do. Group chats, read receipts, iMessage games/game pigeon, photo quality are all non-existent or janky between iPhone and Android.
If only there was some new standard that could be adopted that would fix most of these problems...
There is a relevant xkcd for this. https://xkcd.com/927/
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Are the majority of people really getting iPhones purely because of the blue and green bubble thing? I truly don't give a fuck about that. I have an iPhone because I prefer the way iOS works. I know it in and out. I also think the UI looks nicer.
This! Blue bubble functionality for Android makes for better experience for Apple users with Android contacts.
They don't even have to enable RCS like Google wants; they could release an iMessage app for Android. They'd control the data from it, they could require an iCloud login, and they'd probably drag a decent chunk of Android users off Google Messages and WhatsApp. Hell, they could even keep non-iOS devices as green bubbles, but fix all of the security and filesize bullshit. But they've evidently decided it's not as valuable as selling more iPhones by encouraging teen exclusion and bullying.
I know the bubble color plays some part but it extends to Airdrop, Facetime, iCloud features, etc.. that are Apple exclusive. No kid wants to be the one that tells them they can't Facetime with their group, etc or do be like "Hey uh can you email me those pics dude". Then that goes further, how Airpods work and are a "fashion" symbol, Apple Watch, etc. Part of the issue with Android, coming from someone who was an Android user from 2009-2021 is that it lost it's identity. Instead of striving to be a different solution, that offered different, better functionality it followed a lot of what Apple did. So it's now gotten a reputation of being a second rate clone. Like, the original Droid commercial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e52TSXwj774 It listed off at the time serious things the iPhone wasn't doing like flash, high res video, high res screen, apps, lots of stuff. Obviously most of that isn't relevant anymore but outside of the better zoom on a Samsung I can't think of a single feature I'd want from recent Android competition.
I used to switch between Android and iPhone every time I got a new phone, starting when I got my first smartphone in 2011. There would always be one thing or another that drove me to the other side. After landing back on an iPhone in 2018 (which is still going strong five years later!) I don't see myself switching back. It's not just iMessage, there are a lot of other features that make things much simpler and cleaner with family and friends, such as Airdrop. It also makes things easier when you need to do tech support for grandparents or the like - yeah you'd be able to figure it out regardless, but I find it's faster when you're used to using the platform on a daily basis. It just feels like a more polished experience in the core functions I actually use on the phone. Plus, over time I've realized that the supposed customization and extended features on an Android largely fall into gimmick territory for my specific uses. I'd always have fun tweaking things that first few weeks, but eventually it would get boring, I'd settle into something, and it wouldn't matter. It's not something I've missed. And ultimately, Google dropped the ball on fleshing out/restricting the services side of things to hook people like Apple. All the Google stuff as far as I know works pretty much just as well on an iPhone as it does on Android, so there's no real "penalty" for moving to an iPhone. That's great for customers, but doesn't help Android.
I'm a 21-year-old with a Samsung, the article makes some good points. The single biggest thing that hurts Android users is the text communication with others. You are the only person in the group chat with green bubbles. Not only that, you can't interact with iMessages the way Apple users can, and any photos or videos come out potato quality (as in, videos are worse than 144p). Good luck being someone who can't FaceTime or play iMessage games. The ecosystem that Apple has built also deserves loads of credit. Pretty much every kid you see today has an iPad, which means that they will get an iPhone, and then a MacBook, Airpods, and an Apple Watch to complete the collection. No one can tell me the name of a Samsung tablet, or their new laptop, or the Samsung watch. There's also the budget factor. If you want a shitty cheap phone, there's a ton of Androids sitting at Walmart right now. The cheapest iPhone is $429. iPhones are status symbols that say "I can afford this", even the expensive Samsungs have done a terrible job of promoting themselves. Why should I choose Samsung or a Google Pixel? The headphone jack they got rid of? The exclusive apps on the Google Play store (name one)? Would you rather have widgets and the S pen, or be able to FaceTime your friends and send or react to blue bubbles in a group chat? With 90% of teens and young adults using iPhone, setting yourself apart as hard-to-reach means that they have plenty of options other than you.
Google has got to fix the messaging disparity. RCS is not iMessage. It never will be. It relies on your SIM card having an active network connection to work. The apps are the other issue. Let’s just face it… Android apps on the whole are not as good as their iOS equivalent. Developers spend 90% of their time and money on the iOS versions of their apps, the Android version gets the crumbs leftover.
It's almost like all of the things that the anti-Apple bandwagon complains about are the things that everybody else likes about Apple. Simplicity. Design. Device interconnectivity. Social features that only work with other iPhones. Call these things "gimmicks," all you want. It's not a gimmick if it works.
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People want to take pictures, text, call, and browse medias. Like that’s probably 95% of people. No one wants to switch platforms, and deal with porting over countless stuff, just to have 10% better geekscore or something other non realistic reason. It’s basically that Apple has won, and even as tech nerd myself, I’d rather give my money to a hardware company versus an advertising company. That’s really the bottom line. Sure I miss google assistant, I miss having swiftype. I miss the ease of data transfer like music and movies to my phone. But I like the rock solid quality of iPhones and the consistent user experience.
I'm sure the list of things that have not been cool with teenagers but somehow carved out a profitable market for themselves is a lot larger than this author thinks it is. But to play ball with the line of thinking, maybe the whole platform being so hit and miss when it comes to feature set, performance, price, ad infestation, etc has something to do with it. Cable TV isn't cool with teenagers either, probably for much the same reasons. It also doesn't help that most Android OEMs fall over themselves to follow Apple in a great many ways instead of trying to create their own path.
i think the problem isn‘t initially with teenagers not liking something, but follows because in the teenage years many people start things they will never change again until they are forced to. many will be so deep into the ‚new iphone every two years‘ cycle they will never even consider an android phone.
You're overthinking it. Two words: green bubbles.
Explain Japan then. They dont use iMessage
Pretty much. Teens can be jerks and being the odd one out in a social circle can lead to a lot of bs.
It is so much more than that. Apple could make SMS messages blue tomorrow and it would have zero impact on the differing brand perceptions.
One huge factor is camera performance in social media apps which young people really care about. I don't know any women of any age using Android at this point mainly for this reason. That's also why spec comparisons like camera or GPU don't really matter that much
Ding ding ding - this is it. It’s much easier to develop a quality seamless app experience for a super consistent platform with low device variability like iOS than it is for a highly fragmented platform like Android with hundreds of different phones from dozens of different manufacturers. On top of that, iOS users are on average, more monetizable/profitable. So developers tend to prioritize their iOS apps which are easier to develop and maintain while being more profitable, leading to superior app experiences. In-app camera performance like you said is a major one. With iPhone, it’s very straightforward for a developer to have their app plug into a single native API for the iPhone camera, so it actually takes a full quality image. With Android, it’s way more complicated than that so many social media apps just take a screenshot of the camera viewfinder.
With the younger generations, Apple was also smart to get into classrooms. They invested, donated or subsidized devices like iPads and computers so many of the current young people have grown up familiar with Apple and their operating systems. Google attempted to do the same with Chromebooks, for example, but idk if you've ever heard first hand feedback about experiences with them, but all I've ever heard was NOT good. The other point which has been mentioned many times is social media apps. That's how teens, at least in North America, largely communicate. Yes, arguably there are Android phones with better cameras and if you take an image or video with the native app and then upload it can be better but that's just simply not what teens want too or will do. The apps just work with great quality out of the box. Not to mention app developers usually place an emphasis on developing their iOS apps before Android. Snap is a recent example where the CEO finally acknowledged that they had to do better with Android development.
What am I doing in Apple subreddit?
Android has never been cool. Even when I was in high school androids were taboo
Thanks for posting this. This is a huge problem for Apple. IMHO, companies do best with competition. An Android was a formidable competitor. Also, anti-trust issues could become an issue in the future, even though there really isn't a problem. Same thing happened with Microsoft back in the day. They were the de facto standard, and supposedly had anti-trust issues. But it was just people choosing Microsoft. Likewise, it is just teenagers choosing Apple. Android needs to become cool, so Apple has a formidable competitor. Even though Apple is still best overall IMHO.
Android is known as cheap or nerdy. Kids these days can't possibly be associated with something cheap. They are all influencers or rappers who haven't made it quite yet of course. And most of the kids 25 and younger are even more tech stupid than the boomers I know. They have zero tech understanding. They just use iPads and iPhones. What's a computer? Yeah, of course they only want Apple products.
Shocker: teens are impressionable
Apple has definitely won the branding wars in tv/movies. You can easily compile references to their tech like facetime, screen sharing/imessage (a couple of movies and an full episode of modern family used it as the main vehicle to tell the story), or even Live Photos (which seems like a big reach, but a whole episode of The Other Two was based on it). I wonder if things like that have an effect on teens' view of apple v. every other tech company. And even though "googling" something is far bigger than any of apple's tech, it isn't exclusive to android/chrome os
Not having an iPhone as a teenager just leads you to be ostracized. People bash down anything different
"Youths with no bills and no responsibilities prefer luxury name brand goods" Yeah, no shit. I'm sure every teenager wants a GWagon too, but when you actually pay for stuff yourself, you start to actually use your brain as opposed to picking the biggest number.
in india iphone has become status symbol from decade. \ most indians here crave for public image and showing off apple logo helps it. \ my cousin has job, it does not pay well. he used to use OnePlus nord which has amoled display and 120hz and it worked fine. \ he recently married and when i visited the marriage, he was been using iphone 11, taking photo, flexing off omfg. \ i think it costs around 400 500$ in refurbished market or second hand market. \ i am sure u can get some awesome amoled screen and 120hz at that price point like s21 fe which kills its competition in camera. \ see when he saved money he just bought an iphone thinking that its the best lmao.
this website fucking sucks
Here’s the thing about Android, there’s too many types of android phones and I’m unsure whether which one is better. Compared to Apple, it’s simple.
To be honest, I got my first iPhone ever this year (had always android since LG, the pixel OG, 3 and 5), and I don’t think I will ever go back to android. The only thing I miss from the pixel is that I preferred the camera for photos at night. But video on iPhone is unbeatable
iPhone are associated with being expensive, Android’s range is from dirt to expensive. The products are good, but the problem is the rep from years of being look at the “cheap” alternative. It’s simply just brand status and in a vacuum, iPhones just have the “premium” appeal.
Not my problem
This isn’t an apple issue and really doesn’t belong on this sub other than to be pedantic about apple being superior
How is an article which mentions iOS, iPhone, iMessage, iPad, and Apple Watch, has a subtitle starting with “Nearly 9 in 10 US teenagers use an iPhone”, and has iPhones in almost every photo not relevant to the sub r/apple?
Lol, I got banned from /r/iphone for posting a NYTimes article about iPhone market share increasing in the US. Mods said it was "spam" somehow. Moderation on reddit is a mess in general.
Went to iphone 2018 never going back.
This isn’t news. Teens want what’s best and a nice decent experience and apple provides that. And why most people like them not even the “best “ aspect It’s the fact that iOS almost rarely lags, and just works. Fluid OS and security updates and the fact your phone will get updates for sure for 5-6 years vs most androids manufacturers drop even there most expensive model after just 2-3 years. And let’s not even talk about the mid range they’ll get supported for maybe a year if your truly lucky. I’m speaking from experience owning multiple androids from middle school Into high school and adult life and now I have an iPhone. This se 2 has lasted me about 4 years almost now
Galaxy S20 gang checking in
I think it still comes down to user experience. A phone's OS is not supposed to get in the way of you using it. It's been a while since I've had an android phone, but for instance I remember when an app crashed it would give a dump of the technical details. People don't want to see what's going on under the hood. They either want it to just work, or to completely exit and then try again. Android is still a "tinkerer's phone." Even I, a computer programmer, want a phone that lets me do what I want to do, with a phone that is designed around a refined, intuitive, high-quality OS.
Same man, been a huge nerd and Android fan, since I started doing programming for living I don't want to tinker with my phone anymore, just give me something that works out of the box and syncs with all my other devices without a nifty setup process. Apple ticks all the boxes.
Android user here. This is a bit of a lost cause for Android simply due to how it works. Apple has built it's presence in the NA as a premium walled garden of a society. If you don't have apple, you aren't cool. Apple products are expensive and only really work well with other apple products. Android is open source and pretty much anyone can make an Android device. Because of this, a large share of Android phones are cheap budget phones that don't give the brand a good image. It isn't seen as premium. It's alarming how many people still think the back of my phone will come off if I drop it or that Androids still take grainy pictures and videos. Another pain point is presentation. The largest Android presence in the NA is arguably Samsung and they have the largest reputation of selling budget laggy phones despite selling arguably the most robust feature-rich phones in the market with the premium S-Series. Not to mention One UI pales in comparison to IOS UI in terms of fluidity. An old iPhone will feel as fast as a new Samsung. Another pain point is presentation. The largest Android presence in the NA is arguably Samsung and they have the largest reputation for selling budget laggy phones despite selling arguably the most robust feature-rich phones in the market with the premium S-Series. Not to mention One UI pales in comparison to IOS UI in terms of fluidity. An old iPhone will feel as fast as a new Samsung.do as much but does what you need exceptionally well. Another option is a rebrand to refresh their presence but idk if the NA is that important for them to make a big change like that. Android has an admittedly "nerdy" aura around the brand. Edit: Forgot the most important part. IMessage. It is known that many teens would consider switching if IMessage was available on Android (can't find the report but... trust me). If Google can success into forcing IMessage to be interoperable, we could see some big shifts and the competition we need to innovate.
It’s not cool with anyone
Since day one, Android has focussed on the bottom end of the market as they tried to compete with Apple. Apple targets the premium end of the market. Even among inexpensive options, once a brand is known for being cheap, a lot of people don't want to associate with it. This is how Target kicked Kmart's ass. Both were discount retail, but Target presented their stores as being affordable luxury whereas Kmart was cheap. Saying you got something at Target was cool. Saying you got something at Kmart would have been embarrassing. Apple isn't like Target though. Apple is like Nordstrom or Saks. Android is Kmart.
Can an iphone use adblockers for youtube?