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Android Users Are So Committed that Exploding Note 7 Did Little To Help Apple: NPD (appleinsider.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Like loyalty to a political party or hometown sports team, smartphone users are extremely passionate about their choices -- a commitment that led many customers to stick with Samsung, despite the disaster of its downright dangerous Galaxy Note 7. Earlier this week, mobile analytics firm Flurry published data from the holiday season, showing that Apple saw twice as many device activations as rival Samsung. Despite Apple's continued commanding lead in holiday sales of smartphones and tablets, however, the numbers suggested Apple's share was lower and Samsung's was slightly higher from last year. Attempting to explain the trends shown in the data, NPD analyst Stephen Baker told The Wall Street Journal he believes that Android loyalists are committed, and even dangerous exploding batteries in the Galaxy Note 7 were not enough to push significant numbers of customers over to the iPhone. "Most of those who bought or wanted to buy a Note 7 opted for a different high-end Galaxy phone," Baker said.
it's not loyalty to android that keeps them from going to apple. it's apple that keeps them from going to apple
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's probably not so much they are fanatical about Android, but simply don't want to use Apple, and there's really only the one main competitor to turn to from there. If you don't want an Apple handset you are almost bound to buy an Android set, unless you have a fetish for Windows.
People are pretty heavily conditioned by decades of advertising to believe brand is a highly valuable thing when deciding which item to buy. Samsung has a lot of brand recognition and many leading products on the market - it's no surprise they held their ground.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
At the very least, the headline should had been "Samsung users".
The summery compares Samsung sales with Apple, not Android.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
How does this fanboy tripe make it to the front page? You could just as easily spin an alternate headline "iOS users are so committed that removing standard features in order to sell overpriced earbuds did little to help Samsung."
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
First, Samsung made the exploding batteries. Samsung is not the only Android manufacturer. If an HP computer exploded, we wouldn't be seeing an article wondering why people weren't switching away from Windows.
Second, I won't switch because I don't want to find/buy/download all new apps.
Android is my mobile OS of choice, the hardware it runs on may not be Samsung on the next purchase
crazy dynamite monkey
you may be surprised to know that samsung is not the same as android...
Stop making it sound as if it was a flaw. that was a FEATURE DAMMIT!
Apple owners only wish they had that feature in their phones.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'd wager it's more the ecosystem lock in. Both of these app/media ecosystems have been around long enough that most users have a significant investment in them, whether they planned to or not.
The obvious lock in is previous app purchases, you don't want to have to rebuy all those apps and games you purchased on your first real app ecosystem.
If you have more than one person in the ecosystem, that's a real lock in... with app purchase and music subscription sharing, it simply costs more to have your family split between iOS and Android. In addition, you get access to great family features like location sharing when you all have the same type of device. So if you want to switch, you have to be ready to move not just your phone, but 2+ phones at the same time if you really use these features.
And not just money, but time, curating music libraries and playlists in the cloud music solution provided by the ecosystem takes time and effort. There do not appear to be many good tools to migrate this sort of thing over.
The article is nonsense. The "surprise" that users didn't opt to move to a phone with different software after having one with a hardware problem does presume that users are really stupid. I'm not saying many aren't, but not that stupid. The more reasonable expectation would be that they'd opt for another Android phone and not an Apple one.
The article mentions may opted for another Samsung phone, but fails to mention than in addition to offering refunds for the Note 7 they purchased, there were additional rebates if they purchased another Samsung phone as a replacement. ( http://venturebeat.com/2016/10... ) Samsung offered to pay people to stay with them and it seems to have worked.
Equating the decision to stick with the same OS and to take advantage of a $100 rebate as loyalty to a sports team ignores too many of the facts.
How about the simple fact that owning apps is a commitment? Who wants to repurchase everything, assuming the store has it in the first place.
Is another man's common sense.
Ford Drivers So Committed That Exploding Pintos Did Little To Help Mercedes Benz.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
It's got nothing to do with being committed. I have other options. For example, I was going to buy a Samsung J7. Samsung took 512mb of the ram out of this years model and hoped I wouldn't notice. I did. Now I'll be buying an LG. Still on on Android, just not Samsung.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So, anyone heard when the Note 8 is due to be released?
As long as Apple blocks Free formats such as WebM they have what they want.
Why would an Android user switch to Apple because they had bad hardware?
There are plenty of non Flammable Android Phones.
The Issue would have to be with Android itself to force a switch.
Actually it might be because the last few iPhones have been massively defective too. Oh and perhaps if you haven't gotten sucked into iTunes licensing hell, you might be smart enough to not do it on purpose at this point.
Analogy: Let's say I'm a Windows user, and I have a laptop that I love. It turns out that laptop commonly catches fire. Based upon that data alone, what kind of laptop do you think I'll purchase next?
Most likely, I think I'd consider switching brands, but still go with a laptop that runs the same software that I like, and has a similar design. I suppose it's possible I'd switch to a Mac, but only if the Mac had the features I wanted, but it certainly wouldn't be my first instinct.
I'm not familiar with the Samsung Note 7, but I'm willing to bet it has some features that doesn't exist in an iPhone. Users who like those particular features will look for a phone that has them when buying a replacement. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that a few users switched to iPhone, but it would surprise me if most users did.
Android didn't explode - only one of hundreds of phones that use Android exploded. Those who like Android (or dislike iOS or Apple) can easily pick another phone. One hardware problem with a Samsung phone isn't going to send customers scurrying to Apple.
princes's Layer is dead and now here mom is why nothing on slashdot?
Why users should switch to a different, hostile platform when one single model of one trusted vendor has a flawed battery?
...I've read on /. I mean, come on, really? Should everyone rush to leave any given brand or ecosystem every time one particular piece fails? (Hint: the answer is NO)
All hardware vendors experience issues of varying degrees with things they make. Some manage to recover, some don't. Abit was one of the great mobo makers of the time. Bad caps marred them, but it doesn't diminish all the excellent stuff they had made, and had they weathered it better they'd likely still be making excellent stuff that people would buy. Asus got hit by the bad caps too, but they managed to survive.
All the hard drive makers, every last one of them have had drives with varying levels of defects. That doesn't diminish the good stuff they made prior, nor did it mean everything they'd go on to make later would be terrible too. Every company that makes routers has issues from time to time.
If everyone ditched a company every time they had a major flaw, no one would be able to buy anything at this point.
Or maybe it's because Note 7 sales only accounted for 0.6% of 3Q 2016 Android sales. (2 million Note 7s vs 328.6 million Android handsets sold (autoplay video warning). Yes, Android sales for the quarter were nearly 1.5x the iPhone's typical sales for a year. 2016 sales figures aren't in yet, but in 2015 Android sold 1.2 billion units. The Note 7 sales would only be 0.17% of that.
The only people who make a big deal about the Note 7 fiasco are Note 7 owners, Samsung stockholders, and Apple fanboys (where TFA comes from). Compared to Android's overall sales, Note 7 sales were a drop in the bucket. Every single Note 7 owner could've switched to iPhones and you would've needed 3 significant figures to even notice.
man, people have such short memories. Pretty much every electronics manufacturer that makes devices that use batteries has had at least one big recall of this sort, everybody goes on about how all their devices explode... and then 4 or 5 months later it happens to some other company & -they- become the new punchline for all those old jokes..
and i dont use iphones either, but having used an android many years ago, and the thing that i liked compared to what i have now (old wp), is that i could connect my ultra cheap android to the computer and move files to it without any kind of retarded syncing/converting application. You could connect it and move some mp3 and some avis to some folder in the phone and then use the app on the phone to open them, i think i remember having done that at some point
i dont know if android still works like that, but i beleive apple still uses the itunes to move, update and all that stuff
when im using my super old windows phone, the time when i have to open the zune app in the computer to move stuff to the phone... i cant even describe how much i hate that thing, i just got nausea just thinking about it and im not even kidding
Thats why, if you can still move things to the phone easily on android, just copypaste stuff from a folder in your computer to a folder on your other computer (phone), android would always be my choice when this thing breaks. Just that little detail alone. Now i dont know if you can still do that, but if you can then android is for me. Nowadays maybe itunes is awesome, and the thing syncs well, and when you move something it stays where you put it, but its too much risk i cant stomach it, i have ptsd because of zune, and i cant take similar design.
Android users are smart enough to know that an exploding battery is a hardware problem, not an OS problem. The fix to avoiding an exploding battery is to change hardware, not OS.
Android is the OS. Samsung is the manufacturer of a particular device that uses Android. If you like Android you can buy a device from any plethora of makers. I get it, the article is from appleinsider.com, so they have a definite bias, but there argument is less than flimsy at best. It follows the same logic as saying you had bought one bad chevy cruze, so you are now only going to buy diesel vehicles.
Android devices tend to be a lot less expensive than everything else. That has always been true, and has been the single biggest reason why Android is so popular. The majority of people don't care about what a device can do as long as it can do the minimum they need, and I guess, play Candy Crush.
All the people I know who use apple fall into two categories: People that need an easy to use device and have the money to buy apple, or people who are technical inclined but don't *want* to deal with complexity, and have the money to pay the Apple Tax.
There's really nothing in between. People who demand control, or care about the tech specs, and have the patience/willingness to play sysadmin on their phone buy Android. People who can't afford the Apple cost, buy an Android.
I'm not going to get into the technical aspects of each platform, cause that's not really relevant. This is all based on general perception/reputation.
I personally, gave up on Android at the 4.x time period, cause the Samsung S3 I got was the single worst device I had ever owned. If it wasn't Samsung's pre-loaded unremovable crapware, it was other things, like OS not keeping Apps in line or the absurd way it handled MicroSD cards. And this was on top of several landfill android devices I bought that were so horrible that they weren't even fit for purpose for anything more advanced than staring at your home screen.
Course, if Apple continues to make stupid design decisions like taking away very heavily used ports just so they can save 2 cents on their BOM, I may end up having to re-evaluate my requirements.
Whereas Apple == iPhone. Not hard to grasp, is it.
Samsung isn't the only manufacturer of Android phones, and Apple isn't the only alternative.
Blackberry, Sony, and now even Google is getting back into branding. Maybe you've heard of them? Granted it is becoming a stretch to call these 'manufacturers', on the other hand software and QA are more important these days anyway.
I've just switched to Blackberry from Samsung myself due to the Note fiasco, and the transition was painless since Blackberry is now Android-based. As a bonus, Blackberry's additions to Android are actually very useful and very well done, nothing at all like Samsung's bloatware.
I wanted something that would handle harsh environments.
An iPhone with a Lifeproof case is perfect. Plus if you mess up the case over time, you can replace just the case - not so with your phone which is simply rugged.
at that point the phone would be just as heavy and bulky as the Kyocera
But more functional and stable software-wise. And in-bteween bad telecom closets you'd have the option to remove the case... I go hiking in remote areas and also like to deck my phone out in a very rugged case when I'm remote. But just wandering around town there's no need for all that protection, and it's far nicer to have a slimmer phone for the pocket.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
According to recent numbers, Apple devices lead all others in activations during the Christmas season...
Dog is my co-pilot.
There will never be a Note 8. The brand is tarnished. Samsung will brand what they might have released as "Note 8" under a different name.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
but that's Ok because it means i get a new phone.
Android is an OS that runs on 1000's of models of hardware. Android is not the 'exploding note'. Worst case it should effect the Samsung brand, as it has *nothing* to do with android, good or bad. But aside from that, people are smart enough to know that everyone has an occasional bad product, its all in how you handle the mistake if you lose business or not.
You can't buy a new iOS phone that has a headphone jack.
What is stopping you from buying a new iPhone 6s?
Certainly not Apple; they are still in production...
If you truly believe that lack of a headphone jack is a dead-end idea then it should be back with the iPhone 8, correct?
What do you want to bet that will happen, vs. MANY other Android phone makers taking out the headphone jack in the coming year?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I go back and forth between iOS and Android pretty regularly. I like both platforms actually and see merits and disadvantages of both.
People that get this worked up over their cell phone seem a little off to me.
Android Users Are So Poor that They Cannot Afford IPhones
There you have it, with stoopid capital letters in Every Fucking Word(TM) Including IPhone.
n/t
the Samsung Galaxy Notes 7 that exploded actually were owned by people thinking about switching to iPhone. If you have an Android device, it is better that you do not express your feelings about the operating system in front of you.
Ah, yes, I too remember the day the hard drive in my Windows PC died, and I was so incensed I switched to Macintosh computers.
Oh wait, no one does that.
Changing your phone OS is the same as changing that on your computer: you have to replace software, reconfigure stuff, re-train yourself. It's a real effort, and so it's not surprising it takes more than one bum phone to make people go through it.
You could apply the same logic to the missing headphone jack on the iPhone 7. Many would argue it's a limitation rather than a feature, but not, apparently, a big enough limitation to make people switch.
Multiple vendors really helps the Android user to get what they want.
Sure, if it's the feature set that you're talking about. If you want a new phone that isn't abandoned update-wise a year or less after you get it, you have one Android option: the Pixel.
Most Android users are not Note 7 users, or Note x users, or even Samsung users, so this seems obvious. Should a Ford F-250 having electrical issues convince me to buy a Hyundai sedan, or dissuade me from buying a Chevy crossover SUV?
Android users are Android users because Android works for them, and/or they have no interest in iOS or Apple products. When did the iphone v. Samsung (if not just the Note) become the only smartphone story in the media, anyway? I still like my old LG G3 because it works, and will probably buy a ZTE Axon 7 soon. There are plenty of good non-Samsung options that are also not iphones.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Death By Construction Accident or Poorly-Maintained Machinery "Explodes" In Coal Mine doesn't get people drooling over the media. Or people demanding equal industry metrics, but that's not the cheap shot I came to make:
Journalists only want eyeballs; specifically, the end financial effect of eyeballs. Informing you isn't even a tertiary domino.
Why would you expect the poors to be able to afford Apple.
I mean really...it is the poors who use android.....
I think it's less to do with fanboyism or brand loyalty and more to do with wanting to take advantage of knowledge of how the thing works. The novelty of figuring out how yet another UI works wears off for people trying to achieve things.
-Dave
Actually the problem stems from skipping 6. So yes, the next Note will be the 6 as it ought to have been. Then they can jump to 8 after that because there's already been a 7.
I tried to stream some clips from my Samba share, and basically every app forces you to use both its own file manager AND video player at the same time. I don't know if it's a limitation of iOS but it killed off any chances I'm leaving Android.
1st) It's not apple vs android. (Insert sarcasm) one android device had a problem everyone must flock to apple.
Sorry to burst your bubble but apple and android are not direct competitors. Samsung has to fight many manufactors, HTC, Motorola, etc...
2nd) The battery exploding was pretty much the only issue I heard the device had. So why would you think because one thing went wrong, that we would assume that Samsung got everything wrong?
3rd) Why would so many people want to learn a new OS just because they had to replace their phone?
4th) You do know the credit for the note7 was only $200, right? The cost of an iPhone is far more than that.
5th) Not everyone likes Apple. Many of us realize it is what it is. Overpriced hardware, that does essentially the same thing.
Why does any of this surprise you?
Do a google search for iPhone6 or iPhone7 fire. You'll find that they also had a few incidents :-)
The Note7 had a higher incidence of it because of some dumb design decisions to maximize battery size, but phones catching fire because of lithium batteries is not a new thing...
How about some intelligent reporting here?!
What the hell does a defective hardware part for a niche device have to do with the entire platform demographic?!
PLEASE get your (reporting) shit together!
How DARE you attempt to suggest that potentially literate, intelligent fellow humans make an invalid connection here - that a poorly designed battery sold to Samsung would taint ALL Android devices?
WAIT! I get it now. You MUST be a government official. That explains a lot!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
You're looking at it the wrong way.
It's not android vs. apple.
Its samsung and many many other manufacturers against apple. People do not care about android vs. iOS. When samsung devices burn, they may loose some users. But the odds that they choose apple next are just 1/N, when there are N-1 android devices left and just 1 iOS device.
The writer of the summary appears to think that "Android" and "Samsung" are the same thing. That's pretty fucking stupid.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.