Android beats iOS in smartphone loyalty, study finds

If you have the money to buy a new iPhone and are considering a new smartphone, your range of options is effectively any smartphone device in the market.<p>If you&#x27;re buying an Android device, you&#x27;re statistically likely trying to save money and therefore a new iPhone isn&#x27;t a realistic option. Thus, the range of options you consider tends to be Android-only unless your smartphone budget has changed significantly since the previous time you bought a phone.<p>These points are worth considering when looking at the chart presented in the link.

We likely have a baserate problem here. Most phones are android, so if someone just picked at random, they’d usually pick android. This doesn’t always mean ‘android loyalty’. It could as easily mean ‘price loyalty’ or ‘carrier promotion loyalty’. If someone picks iOS, with its smaller market share and number of phones, it is more likely brand loyalty to Apple&#x2F;iOS.<p>So the two loyalty numbers are not exactly comparable

Does anybody other than people who actually work in the marketing department of a phone manufacturer care? Is anybody still basing their identity around the brand of smartphone they use in 2018? If so, that&#x27;s sad. The iPhone vs. Android battles were stupid in 2010 they&#x27;re beyond pathetic in 2018. Pick the phone you like and move on with your life.

Android tends to be more flexible with a few things. At least I see a lot of users using custom fonts and crazy widgets, that would never work out with the iOS sandbox concept. iOS users that i know often have an iPhone because it just works pretty well. They would use iMessage and iCloud and everything is fully integrated.<p>I am currently on iOS, but I have deep concerns how Apple is controlling the Apps on the App Store and in general is pushing its agenda to everyone’s phone just like that. When my 6s breaks I will very likely switch back to Android just for the reason of being able to root my device, sideload applications and control traffic via hosts file. Also, Wireshark and other fun stuff.

I would like to see the data for the top end phones. Comparing the iPhone to the Galaxy, Note, and Pixel, who has the brand loyalty?<p>Many people pick Android because that is what their cell phone provider has for cheap.

Between the ecosystems and physical handset variety (Freetel Mushashi vs. Galaxy Note 8), I&#x27;m not surprised that the data would show that Android now has higher loyalty than iOS.<p>Why? I would hazard that it would be the Google ecosystem; Gmail, Google Maps, Google Drive, YouTube, etc are just about irreplaceable without compromises that most non-HN users are not generally willing to make.<p>Edit: Well, guess who forgot something as elementary as Google ecosystem being on Apple devices too? Me.<p>It&#x27;s a strange feeling being embarrassed based on some text on the internet.

The headline makes this seem like a recent development, but according to the CIRP data, this has been the case since 2013.<p>The article even makes note of this, further down.<p>For Apple, iOS is a differentiator. For everyone else making handsets, the software is not a differentiator.

The numbers that don’t lie are in smart phone profits. If you have a reasonable amount of loyalty, you will also be able to charge a premium. Yet only Apple and maybe Google’s pixel are in that arena.<p>Money talks!