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Illustrating the Socioeconomic Divide With iOS and Android
An anonymous reader writes: "Android has a huge market share advantage over iOS these days, but it hasn't had as much success at following the money. iOS continues to win over many app developers and businesses who want to maximize their earnings. Now, an article at Slate goes over some of the statistics demonstrating this trend. A map of geo-located Tweets show that in Manhattan, a generally affluent area, most of the Tweets come from iPhones. Meanwhile, in nearby Newark, which is a poorer area, most Tweets come from Android devices. In other tests, traffic data shows 87% of visits to e-commerce websites from tablets come from iPads, and the average value of an order from an iPad is $155, compared to $110 from Android tablets. (Android fairs a bit better on phones). Android shows a huge market share advantage in poorer countries, as well. Not all devs and business are just chasing the money, though. Twitter developer Cennydd Bowles said, 'I do hope, given tech's rhetoric about changing the world and disrupting outdated hierarchies, that we don't really think only those with revenue potential are worth our attention. A designer has a duty to be empathetic; to understand and embrace people not like him/herself. A group owning different devices to the design elite is not a valid reason to neglect their needs.'"
"the average value of an order from an iPad is $155, compared to $110 from Android tablets."
The funny thing is, that often it's for the exact same thing both of them bought.
Sites check the user-agent and rich guys (IOS) are shown a higher price for the same objects, as it has been noticed quite a few times.
So if you want a bargain, you need a user-agent-changer for your iPad to mimic a poor people's OS.
People with lower incomes buy less expensive devices and spend less money? Who could have ever guessed? Brilliant work by Slate.
Many of the commenters on the Slate article point out that the map is drawn in such a way that the red (iPhone) tweets are drawn on top of the green (Android) ones. That creates a misleading picture.
There's no "app" for screenshots because it's built into Android itself, and has been since 4.0 (which was released many years ago). It's volume down + power button. Just Google for "Android screenshot".
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I was just about to respond to that myself, though differently.
I believe in being empathetic, but I don't believe anybody has any kind of duty or moral obligation to be.
I think the worst form of greed is expecting somebody else to be more generous than you yourself are willing or able to be. Asking is one thing, but expecting or demanding is another.
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I'm gonna launch my own service, called "Idiotter".
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Many people would love a Ferrari, but they are expensive, so they drive Toyotas instead.
I know of VERY few people who lust after an Android device. They lust after Apple, and buy Android because that's what they can afford. The low end of ANY market is always a lot bigger than the high end. Cars, houses, phones, whatever. Toyota outsells Ferrari by quite a lot too.
oh that's a load of horseS#$T, I know a LOT of people who lust after flagship android devices, The Samsung Galaxy line and HTC models are amazing. iPhones are fine devices to be sure, but they aren't the "Ferrari's" of the world no matter how much your ego would like to believe that.
Not to mention the obvious phallic symbolism of the Android logo, standing erect and solid like the triumphant penis of a rapist after his midnight prowl, green with womb envy and intent to destroy in the name of masculinity. Contrast that with the Feminine flows and curves of the artistic iOS which Google has tried in the past to appropriate as their own.
If you look at the heatmap of downtown San Francisco and you click off Apple you'll see that there are plenty of android users in wealthy areas. The apple red just blocks you from seeing the android blue underneath. So IMHO, Android has a lot of wealthy users but Apple only has wealthy users.
I mean yes, there are expensive Android devices. You can have a nice, premium, phone or tablet if you wish. I loves me my Galaxy Note 3 but it certainly costs a lot, more than an iPhone even. However there are also cheap Android devices. You can get a smart phone for $100 or less (talking full price here, not subsidized). So Android phones are an option on most budgets.
Until recently, all you could get with Apple was the standard iPhone which is like $600-700 full price. Even the new "c" model is $550 full price. That puts them out of range of most people who want prepaid phone plans, which is often what people with lower incomes go for.
Well those people are also likely to spend less on apps. After all, if your finances are such that you wish to buy an economical phone, you probably don't want to ruin it with spending a ton of money on software.
So ya, that will push the average down on Android phones. Personally, I see that as a big positive to Android. There's something to be said for a thing that can be available to a wide segment of the population. Exclusivity to the affluent isn't something I consider to be positive.
You pick a platform based on market size.
PC's historically have had a lot more software available for them than Macs because you have a larger target market. If you target one platform, you target PC's, unless the market for your application is graphic artists, musicians, etc., then you target Macs. If you target two markets, you target PC's and Macs, and you don't target Linux.
If I target iOS because I have a product that will work on a tablet/mobile platform, then I have the largest possible market. I'm guaranteed a practically forced upgrade to the most recent version of the OS the platform can run, and I'm guaranteed that the device is going to have the same set of sensors and input methods as every other device.
I'm guaranteed that, even though it's not in AT&T's best interests, given their contract model, to not have the carrot of me not being able to run the latest OS unless I re-up my contract, I'm going to get the latest OS anyway, and screw what AT&T wants, and screw their business model, because that's what Apple wants.
For Android, I have to target a lot of versions of the OS; I practically have to target whatever the version was at the time they did the repo code freeze on the android sources, and started the platform port. I have to target different screen resolutions. I have to target different input methods. I have to target different camera capabilities, resolutions, directionality, and so on.
Practically speaking, each android device is an island. Some have a lager market share. If I wanted to target 6 platforms, 2 of them would be iOS, 1 of them would be iOS on iPhone 5 (different aspect ratio), and the other 3 would probably be Samsung Galaxy products (2 phones and a tablet, based on market share).
If you could resolve the android version difference problem, that'd go a hell of a long way toward making android competitive. It would require changing the android development model, and some of the partnership agreements.
Instead, Google is concentrating on forcing branding onto the boot screen, and forcing apps onto the device by default. The apps are a good thing, in general, since they tend to rationalize the user experience, but not the same way the VGA standard rationalized the user experience on PC's: minimally, there should be resolution and aspect ratio requirements for android - they matter a hell of a lot more to establishing an applications base than putting up a logo at boot time.
The walls on Google's walled garden are also rather porous. They are more "We won't let you play with the toys we have" rather than "we will keep the bad guys out". And it shows. It shows that other people can run android app stores, that they do, and that there's a huge amount of malware out there in those place. They show in the balkanization of the market by OEM vendor stores, and by carrier stores.
It's crap that I can buy an iOS device, and get "The Apple Experience" - a uniform thing across all the devices - but that I can't buy an android device and get "The Android Experience" - unless you call a balkanized chaos "The Experience".
So yeah, as a developer, I don't target android unless I'm Roxio and have more money than God to spend on programmers for platforms where I'm going to end up selling 50 copies of the game that everyone has, and then sell follow-on modules on a monthly basis until the cows come home, in order to monetize that investment over a long (I don't care how long; I'm not living hand to mouth, I'm Roxio!) period of time.
So yeah, android has shit apps. Make it a uniform platform, instead of me trying to develop for the Mac and the Apple IIe and the Ohio Scientific, and the Orange Micro, and the TI-99/4A, and the Timex Sinclair Z-8000, and the Tandy CoCo, and the Wang word processing station, and the ... or keep your balkanized mosaic of "Choice, man! Yeah! Choice!" and write your own damn software.
You make it up in volume. This is a false dilemma.
Actually you do not get enough volume to make it up, at least as of August 2013. According to http://www.forbes.com/sites/tr...
Number of downloads per app, Android 60,000 and iOS 40,000.
Average revenue per download, Android $0.01875 and iOS $0.10.
Average revenue per app, Android $1,125 and iOS $4,000.
People with money
Samsung’s Galaxy S4 and Note 3 are the best selling Android phones in the world at the moment. Both are cheaper off contract than the iPhone 5S, but not by a huge amount, and both are older models now being discounted. The 5S is price-comparable with Apple's equivalent and is likely to be the best-seller when it's widely available.
So the demoraphic isn't showing that only rich people can afford iPhones.
It's more likely that the wealthy areas are more socially conservative and tend to stick with what they know. iPhones have maintained a consistent interface longer than Android, and compared to Android, have a kind of unchanging retro appeal which is well suited to the "if it aint broke" school of middle-class conservatism.
TLDR iPhones have become the Toyota Camry of phones, a solid, unfrightening, and familiar choice for people who don't want to make risky choices.
... "Manhattan, a generally affluent area."
Manhattan is generally an affluent area. What's the problem with the statement?
It probably says that you waste a lot of money!
Perhaps that's so. Maemo, Meego and Symbian are better than both. I like Android devices because I can use standard cables and standard peripherals, mount it on my desktop and view/hack contents, instead of having to decrypt/jailbreak, etc. to get into an iPhone. Best thing about Android: No iTunes!!!!
Is there a stupid tax for Windows 8 phones? Nokia Lumia 521 far exceeds expectations, more so with Lumia 1520. How many apps do you need anyway?
Having recently been in Spain (with my unlocked iphone 4 in tow), I can tell you that the support for iphones (at least in Barcelona) is terrible. It took trips to 4 different stores to find an iphone 4 compatible prepaid mini-sim (if I had the iphone 5, I would have been SOL and had to pay for roaming data from my US plan). None of those stores prominently placed iphones (although they were available, at least through vodaphone, even the 5 new, but you couldn't use a prepaid sim in it).
I tend to think that the issue is that Spain has a really fractured retail environment, both with a lot of providers (vodaphone/movistar/orange/yoigo and lots of 3rd party options) and with a lot of kiosk type stores. Vodaphone has their own retail outlets, but most of the others seemed to be based in malls, and the malls in turn seemed to have one 'basket' of stores, depending on who owns the mall. During my search for a mini-sim for example, I was sent on a goose-chase from store to store with directions that turned out to be pretty approximate (wrong address, but within about 300 meters of the correct address).
Given that retail environment, I think it's pretty natural that android, with its myriad of slightly customized, provider branded phones etc, fares a lot better than iOS at the moment... People want something that can be supported by their local mall/kiosk.
Toyota makes Scions and Lexus. Ferrari only makes Ferraris, GM makes Chevys. If you're going to do a car analogy at least get it right.
Most of human beings with access to Internet are using Android. They may not be spending most of the money right at this moment, but that is going to change very fast. Or, if your platform gets superseded by competition on iOS, alternative platforms may let you live to fight another day. Remember, Facebook didn't pay 19 billion for $1/year revenues of WhatsApp.
I can confirm this, and that's considering Barcelona is a hotter spot for Apple than other cities, where Apple only has a small corner in a number of shops. Their presence is growing slowly but steadily, but the market here usually prefers those local kiosks for availability and price, and they predominantly offer Android devices of most brands.
Towns and cities with Apple Stores usually have only one of it, whereas there are dozens of sellers for Android devices scattered all over, predominantly in malls as you said.
Offers are usually pretty cheap subsidized phones, and even for free with binding contracts, and they even renew your phone once every year in several cases, for minimal or no cost. However, as you probably realized, this stops being nice and shiny the moment there's any issue or nonstandard need whatsoever. Every side service, from tech support to repairs, is sub-par. Most people will go around with busted phones waiting for a renewal instead of bothering to repair it, which is notoriously complicated, requires a lot of time (and trips) and it usually ends just in replacing the thing entirely.
The prices, the complicated repairs, and the large availability kind of created a culture of changing phones very regularly, even in people with limited income. Good repair shops exist, but they tend to be little electronics workshops in some little corner that you only learn about by word of mouth, and are only used when you are attached to your device for some reason (sentimental value, niche features, etc), or when someone wants to unlock a phone to use with other provider's SIM card.
As usual the Forbes article is full of speculation and bullshit.
While the company does not break out revenue numbers on their apps, recent data in their financial filings seemed to indicate somewhere around $900 million in pay-outs to developers âoeover the last 12 monthsâ
So they are just making a vague guess about Android revenues, not based on any actual figures. Also that only includes payments that go through Google, not other in-app purchases or non-Play purchases. Yeah, you can buy Android apps from anywhere, including the Amazon app store or individual company's web sites, and I have done so in the past. Sat nav apps are a good example, with high value maps and voices being sold without any interaction from Google.
You also have to consider that in some countries the iPhone has very, very little market. If you want to write apps for people living outside America then Android may be not just a better choice but your only choice.
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It's pretty hypocritical to use iOS usage to illustrate "the economic divide", since "economic divide" and "inequality" is the rallying cry of the modern American left. Those wealthy iPhone users are also much more likely to be "liberals".
http://blog.chron.com/techblog...
What that illustrates again is that many so-called "liberals" are using the supposed plight of the less well off as a smokescreen to advance their own agendas.
While the number of apps downloaded is coming from 3rd parties we are still left with Google's financial reports indicating $900M paid to developers compared to Apple's claim of $5,000M paid to developers.
Plus its not just Forbes indicating a huge disparity.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://techland.time.com/2013/...
http://venturebeat.com/2013/07...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ay...
I currently have five moderator points ("Use 'em or lose 'em."). I think I'll use 'em to down-mod the very article/submission.
-5 Flamebait.
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