Android dominates smartphone market AND ShopSavvy
For every ShopSavvy user with an iPhone there are four who have an Android phone. Our downloads per platform are maintaining this disparity. We assumed we were just popular on Android, but there is something much bigger going on. Consumers are flocking to Android in droves!
When I first started talking to folks in the Bay Area back in 2008 and 2009 I suggested that Android’s marketshare might eventually overtake the iPhone. I recall one meeting I had with several executive at Amazon who claimed they had never seen anyone with an Android phone. No one believed that Android had a chance – especially when they compared the G1 to the first iPhone (the G1 was a horrible phone). Fast forward to 2011, to quote Henry Blodget, “Android is Destroying Everyone, Expecially RIM, iPhone Dead in Water!”
ComScore is reporting the following market share numbers:
- Google 33%
- RIM 29%
- Apple 25%
- Microsoft 8%
- Palm 3%
I mentioned these numbers to some of my Apple-fanboy friends (and even a few folks at ShopSavvy) and their response was along the lines of, “Bullshit.” They don’t believe Android is making the sort of inroads it is obviously making. Our numbers support this trend.
This is really interesting. The the blog article you link to he points out that Android still gains despite the iPhone being, in general, less expensive.
One interesting thing I’ve seen in the trenches is companies saying “yes” to the iPhone as a corporate phone because the executives want one; and less adoption of Android.
Granted, my sphere of vision probably isn’t as wide as other people’s.
How long before Android starts getting approved by strict IT departments? When that domino falls, RIM is in for a serious fight.
I work for one such IT dept. We went from a few dozen BBs to about a dozen and 200 iPhones, 3 Androids ( all in IT as test sets ). As much as I love choice supporting 3 devices is a pain. Supporting 2 much less so. We halted Android deploys ( there were other issues, battery life, disagreement over particular handset choices,etc.) Primarily there is a worry that with an Android handset a user can download a spoofed app and get their OWA password stolen or worse if the phone has VPN access into the network. There are products out there to mitigate this but as a relatively small shop such implementation is resource intensive at first.
There are currently 40 phones powered by Android on the market so I would expect that the overall number of downloads would be higher for Android OS than iOS.
Each of these Android phones needs to cover 2.5% of all iOS downloads and total iOS vs Android download game would be even.
@R there are lot more than 40 phones powered by Android – we are seeing more than a 100 different Android phones using our app.
Both apps are free though. Of course ppl are downloading the apps in droves. No one on android buys anything.
@marcos When you say, “No one on Android buys anything.” are you suggesting that Android users don’t buy paid apps? I don’t have the numbers on that since we don’t sell our app on Android, but I can tell you they do a lot of shopping. Our Android users are scanning items in retail every bit as much as iOS users (and perhaps sometimes MORE than iOS users).
I think @marcos meant that Android users may buy stuff it’s just that they aren’t as inclined to pay for apps. I think that is true based on data of others.
This really isn’t surprising, and I think anyone with common sense would argue it. Android devices have become lowest common denominator of smartphones. Up until recently, your choice was AT&T and an iPhone or Android. Now AT&T is offering a selection of Android phones, and it’s now a two horse race with Verizon selling iPhones.
Android handsets are outpacing the iPhone in sales, and I don’t know that I expect that trend to change. This really isn’t that different from other markets where the uneducated consumer is easily swayed by ‘cheaper’. It really helps that you have the Android fanboy crowd proclaiming how it’s ‘Free’.
The problem with the word ‘Free’ is context, and I think that is Marcos point. The ‘Free’ culture that is pervasive in the Android community is not one that pays for applications. They certainly buy things, just not the content and applications that provide that content on their phones. Hopefully this will change, but to date, it has not.
The problem becomes, can Ad supported make up for the lack of purchasing? I do not know, and the companies that could give you a good accounting, like Rovio, aren’t talking about how much they are making per ad supported copy versus purchased, and that is the real number that we need to know to be able to judge which market is going to be the healthier one in the long run.
I believe that Android users are shopping a lot, maybe even searching for cheaper products more often then others, but does it mean they buy (as in “pay”) as much as iOS users? Quite opposite tohgh. Latest numbers says AppStore owns 75% narket value.
I don’t disagree with you. While I don’t know about the propensity of users to pay for apps between the markets – from a pure shopping perspective I don’t think iOS has an advantage here.
You seem to have to pay for the App on iTunes but it’s free on the Android Store. Unless I am missing something, this entire article, and perhaps the odd pricing, seems to be just link bait.
Our primary app on iOS is our free app. We launched the paid version so that we could compete in the paid category as well. There was an inferior product in the paid list that kept moving up despite the fact that it wasn’t as good as our free version – our paid version is an answer to this. The numbers I was referring to were for our free versions.
This is really interesting. Alexander, I’m genuinely curious to know why you’re seeing such dramatically higher downloads on Android when every other mobile app developer I’ve talked to (including the one I work for) is seeing iPhone sales dominate the other platforms by a very large margin. It seems to me that there must be very different types of users on each of these platforms.
Thank you for the very interesting numbers. You make a great app.
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