My grandfather was a Ford man. He would only ever buy a Ford, even during periods when other manufacturers were making vastly superior vehicles.<p>I used to think such loyalty was a silly generational thing. My generation was a fickle consumer. We would research and decide on a purchase based purely on merit. That's how I was with phones. When iPhone was the most compelling phone, I would buy an iPhone. When there was a more compelling Android phone, I would buy that.<p>However, as I get older I'm starting to understand loyalty, and it's not what I expected. It isn't a dogmatic belief in a brand. It's recognizing that sometimes it's easier to stick with what works and not worry about whether there's something better out there.<p>Now that we've been living with smartphones for a while, and they mostly just work, I don't expect people find as much value in switching between Android and iOS. As long as both exist, neither will ever reach 100% market share.
This author has a pretty cynical view that the only reason people use iPhone is because of vendor lock-in, like from iMessage.<p>This disregards the fact that many iPhone customers are still first time buyers with no lock in hanging over their head. And also Apple has an extremely high customer satisfaction rate keeping customers coming back. Customers buy iPhones because they like the experience and ecosystem, not solely due to some service lock-in.
I moved from android to iphone to Windows phone to android to iphone.<p>I'm sticking with iphone. Android has been the worst experience for me. Had an old HTC with 2.# and a Samsung note4, plagued with issues.<p>The thing that annoyed me most (besides Samsung bugs like not being able to remove keyboard notification) is when you register with an email, you cannot use the same email for another service.<p>My contacts exist on my windows live account which happens to be my gmail addy, when I register the phone with gmail I cannot sign in with windows live using the same email because the email already exists. A bug that doesn't happen on Windows phone or iphone.<p>Coupled with slow buggy laggy android phones, and malware. I ditched iphone. Android with so much market share is not a good thing either. Just a IE scenario all over again.
Nuclear bomb on Apple campus? This isn't 1995 and Windows. If anything Android becomes even more fragmented both for commercial reasons and by government meddling requiring different things in different countries until the OS is split up. Saying you are "Android" requires Google's restrictive license and that grates on lots of manufacturers who would love to be out from under their thumb and control their business. Don't forget that Apple still makes almost 90% of the profit from building devices. That is Android's weakness. Even Google doesn't directly make much. You may love your phone but if building it doesn't make the suppliers money something has to give.
I believe the fragmentation issue is going to take a lot longer to solve than the author leads on. Android is rooted in its open nature, and it's what caused the proliferation of the OS in the first place. It's going to take much longer for OEMs to stop shipping bloatware on the devices, or Google will <i>effectively</i> fork the OS simply because the OEMs can't keep up. Look how long it's taken Microsoft to get their OEMs to comply (but I do believe Google is a different beast in this regard).
If something works and as long as it is not such a crucial part of your life and its a matter of life and death, you can (in many cases) always go with what has worked previously.
One other argument can be the cost benefit analysis of the research itself. The time and energy (which ultimately translates to money in some sense) you put on research may not be worth the feature(s) one option offers over the other. You may never use that feature or in case of price, how much you may have to more for the brand you are loyal to may be less expensive than the risk you take by going with an option which you yourself have not tested first hand.
They fly over the biggest details of all: The price.<p>For 100$ you can get the Moto E 2nd gen and I consider it a very high-end phone (nice screen, fast, latest version of android).
This post seems to ignore some huge points. Google can only solve fragmentation by closing the platform, and ending it's primary incentive to manufacturers. Meanwhile, the agreement it would need to use to do that, is already such an overreach, that it's being gone after for antitrust in several countries. In order to reach this Google fanboy's utopia, the agreement would need to get much more illegal than it is now.
I am not sure which phone my father has, but based on searches for trying to solve a simple issue on his it seems like something many Android users have.<p>I cannot delete his email account off the phone. There is no method short of pointing it to a bad email address and provider that I can find and I am not sure it would even allow that change. Really, there is no option anywhere to delete. I did get it to stop pulling email down automatically and when opened.<p>As in, give a consistent and easy to use presentation. Each phone company seems able to totally muck it up but they all have odd issues in common
"Anecdotally, one of the most frequently cited reasons among iPhone users for staying with iOS is that they love the “blue bubbles.”<p>No way. I don't use iMessage (instead I use Whatsup) but I dont consider Android. I have a Motorola G3 also (work) but the Os is confusing, slow and crash frequently.