Android nears 50% mark in the US, comScore reports

[famousringo]

HappySqurriel said:

famousringo said:

Yes, "actively" is the key word here. comScore shows cell phone subscriptions. But while Android subscribers have been growing relative to iPhone subscribers, Android app projects have been declining relative to iOS.

How can we reconcile this conflict? By accepting that the average iOS user is massively more active than the average Android user. I've already cited Google searches. The disparity in app revenue is well documented and mentioned in the link above. Web usage suggests iOS users are three times more active.

comScore doesn't show activity at all, it just shows contracts. Entire markets of mobile devices don't even show up in comScore's smartphone-only analysis. It's not an irrelevant data point, but developers sure don't seem to be making business decisions based on who's kicking ass in the comScore rankings.

I wouldn't expect the users to be substantially different in how they use the device; and, after a decade of buying music at prices that were often more expensive than buying a CD, iTunes users have just been "trained" to be far more likely to pay for apps.

I agree. I would think that the web usage of one pocket computer with a good webkit browser would be quite similar to the usage of another, but metric afer metric shows that that the behavior of the average user is radically different between the two platforms.

And iTunes is an advantage, but not in the "training" you describe. It's an advantage in that Apple already had some 100 million plus accounts with credit card numbers, and a widespread gift card distribution network so people can pay without a credit card. Extending that payment system to apps and other content lowered the barrier to purchasing apps for anybody who had an iTunes account. iTunes users consider digital a discount over physical CDs because they can pay $2 for the two songs they want off an album rather than $8 for a pile of extra filler they don't want. Beyond the top sellers, obscure and imported material is easier to find, never goes out of print/stock, and tends to be around the same price as new albums rather than $20 an album.