But the users who matter do.
Personally, I don't understand why people buy iPhones. If you're in the US, I can understand the texting and video calls lock-in, but even then, I'd buy an Android just because I'd refuse to be a hostage to Apple's services, and I'd wear that green badge with pride.
Furthermore, paying the price of the latest iPhone Pro (or Samsung S Ultra for that matter) is ridiculous and is only acceptable to people with high prices on their contracts. Much like what US people are going through — i.e., if you're paying $100+ on a mobile plan, might as well throw an iPhone in the mix to sweeten the deal. But on my 5 EUR unlimited data plan, me and others do not want an expensive phone included and prefer to pay for that phone up front.
And you can get a phone plan for $15/month
As a company do you want people like that as your customer?
Tesco is a low-mid end supermarket chain in the UK, so this is kind of irrelevant as they need to hit everyone, but in such circumstances people should not complain if the UX sucks on their device because they were excessively cheap, and yet, of course, they do. The truth is the numbers in the article are unacceptably slow across the board.
You can have alternative app stores, you can download torrents on it and then play them with VLC, you can have the actual Firefox browser and even Chrome clones (e.g., Brave) are more capable than iOS Safari web views. You can have an email client that works locally (K-9 Mail). Android has had usable PWA support for years. The most popular chat app, WhatsApp, is not Google's app. Samsung phones don't even push people into many of Google's apps, shipping with Samsung's own launcher, Calendar, Notes, Camera, Gallery, etc., and it even has their own apps store in addition to Google Play. And AOSP, the open-source distribution, is actually usable even without Google's Play Services, which has spawned distributions such as LineageOS breathing life into old devices.
I'm an Android user, and except for the Play App Store and Google Maps, I don't use any other apps from Google and that hasn't happened due to some attempt for "degoogling". Even the app that syncs my CalDAV/CardDAV accounts is not developed by Google (on Android this isn't native, but that's completely fine).
I don't understand why many iPhone users resort to such mental gymnastics to justify an expensive device that's being rented from Apple.
And yes, as an app developer, you want Android users because Android (and its allies, like WhatsApp) are actually winning in the marketplace. Providing clients for all people is how WhatsApp came to dominate the landscape. This is why Apple is so reluctant to give up on their nefarious practices related to their App Store or the restrictions they place on developers, continuously trying to undermine the EU's DMA because they know they only have a short window during which they can milk the user base.
It's slightly more, but still not continental style: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/germany
Android users in the english speaking world do have a habit of being way more trouble than they are worth.
Wouldn’t life be a little better if we considered the needs of people a bit less lucky than ourselves?
What happens when your general approach (ignore the margins) means the "bona fide charitable causes" can't operate because they all require top-of-the-line equipment to even be functional?
Software is already shite, stop trying to justify making it more shite.
I got my first smartphone years and years ago, and it was an android. Then they came out with the iPhone 3GS, and I briefly had that. Didn't like it, traded for an Android. Was ready to experiment back then, even briefly ran Windows Phone flashed on a HTC device. But inertia had its way with me, and I've been sticking with Android ever since. I have all the apps I need. I have my ages-old "weird" workflows set up, like keepass synced through OneDrive. I run an andblocker on firefox. Moving to an iPhone would be just so much pain for no real gain.
If you don't provide an Android app, well, provide me with a burner iPhone if you want me to use your service.
Disadvantaged people deserve a chance to have solutions to their problems too. If we want a society that’s worth being a part of, we’d do well to consider those people.
The fact that you equate people who can’t afford an iPhone to “bottom feeders” is quite telling.
I view maintaining android compatibility as a part of a vendor mitigation strategy, avoiding the creep of tight coupling that can make adjusting to market shifts an intractable problem.
Outside the US, Android is the dominant platform by a wide margin and iOS support is lower priority. And for many services you can't just exclude users anyway, be it for legal reasons or because network effects.
I give my engineers different Android phones as their primary development devices and yet the weird Android issues that keep cropping up are near constant.
When it's a "works for me" on one platform but falls over with different hardware, that usually points to some serious issues (e.g. threading, contention, false assumptions) in your code/app.
Not to say that there probably aren't buggy areas in Android itself, however with an appropriate test budget you could determine which are likely hardware (different phones) vs OS (common across devices, with simple repro apps) vs your software (you have bugzorz).
Saying that half the population somehow doesn't matter for one of the country's largest supermarket chains is completely mental on every level and is not a serious viewpoint.