I always find these reports of rocketing Android marketshare interesting if only for the reason that I've only seen three people I know using an Android phone (and I'm convinced these people were using them out of sheer stubbornness).
Who is buying these incredibly oversized monstrosities?[1]
The categories are probably something like:
- Nerds. These aren't your bog-standard nerds. These are the guys who spend hours trying to do something on their device that only three people will care about. (this used to be me, admittedly)
- People with an unreasonable hatred of Apple (this used to be me too, admittedly)
- People who are stubborn about buying an iPhone even though they know it's probably the best choice.
- People who don't want to pay for an iPhone. These folks will take whatever is proffered by a phone retail salesperson. Since the phones those salespeople are pushing are cheap or free, it stands to reason that's what this group of people walk out with.
- People who don't know any better. These people just need a new phone. They just talk on it and don't give a shit if there's an app for that. Android has become the new feature-phone OS (you can see Symbian share fading in the linked report).
I'm assuming these groups probably cover the majority of people buying Androids. The sales numbers may just be signaling a switch of retailing methods or product availability rather than Android domination but it certainly doesn't point to Android being the better smartphone.
I'm not going to buy the argument that they're better phones -- I've used them and they're not. ↩