Android and iPhone: Possession vs. Utilization | Hacker News Reader

Android and iPhone: Possession vs. Utilization

asymco.com

24 pointsraganesh4 comments

Is it just me or is this a really poorly written article with questionable analysis?

For one, the graphs strike me as confusing. There's too much information trying to be packed into the graphs. It also appears that the various "utilization" measurements are the same on each graph. Furthermore, two completely different types of measurements are used for the "possession" metric, installed base for the U.S. market and quarterly sales for the global market.

Then, there is the questionable "utilization" metrics.

1. Browsing market share: Now, I don't know much about iOs, but on Android there are several different competitive browsers (Opera, Firefox, Dolphin) in addition to the stock browser. Could counting only the stock browser undercount the Android share?

2. Airport/in-flight market share: This is really a measure of what types of phones are used by people who do a lot of flying. Can any conclusions about general smartphone users be drawn from this data? If anything, it just shows that if you are trying to market to the jet-set, iOs is the way to go.

All-in-all it just strikes me a hand-wavy argument that iOs is superior to Android for development. I think there may be a way to make the case, but this certainly isn't it.

The point of this article seems to be that, since Android users are much less likely to submit to price gouging for wifi in airports and on planes, the platform is ultimately doomed. This seems highly suspect to me. The platform has a different monetization strategy for devs, to be sure, and this is even hinted at, but the logical contortions needed to correlate willingness to buy non-premium products at very high prices due to local monopoly with viability of the system as a whole boggle my mind.

It is interesting that two of the four categories in their analysis can be easily described as "niche usage" and one of the others relies on the mobile web browser. The single most common form of smartphone usage, mobile apps, shows that ad impressions on Android far exceed iPhone. I don't know how you draw usage conclusions from that though.

Is it because the barriers to entry into the Android market are much lower? What about the comparative availability of paid vs. ad-supported apps on Android and iPhone? If the research does indeed show that Android users spend less than iPhone users, is that a reflection on loyalty to the platform or the affluence of the userbase?

So very many variables are completely ignored here that it's hard to fathom how the author believed there was a point to be made.

My BEEF:

Airport-Wifi:Why would someone connect to airport WiFi when the phone already has data? Is it because ATT has shitty reception and for many years the iPhone was available on ATT?

In-Air-Wifi: Something about price gouging and iPeople willing to pay for it.

Ad-impressions: How does this ad network marketshare look like between iDevices and Android?

Explain this and then I will once again consider the authors points.

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