iPhone 5 Demand Helps iOS Overtake Android’s Market Share In The U.S.

[famousringo]

superchunk said:

famousringo said:

Here's the funny thing about Android market share: It can't get enough.

In order to actually be a threat to iOS, Android needs to look like a more lucrative platform for developers and peripheral manufacturers. It needs to generate more web hits, ad impressions and online sales than iOS does. It needs to be used more than iOS.

Despite having a commanding 70% of the global smartphone market, I still read stories of app makers who do ten times as much business on iOS (and that's an improvement on the twenty times multiplier I was reading about a year or two ago). Web usage of iOS is twice as high as Android. Black Friday shopping on iOS was three times higher than Android.

This is a problem that Android simply can't grow itself out of. It would have to actually take market share from iOS, which is not something it has yet done, and doesn't seem likely to happen as long as every single network effect favours iOS.

Market share just isn't doing it for Android. It's getting itself into people's hands, but it's not going to succeed until those people start actually using it.

Edit: Also, the mobile forum is over this way.

You mean stuff like this? (facebooks internal push)

http://phandroid.com/2012/11/27/facebook-employees-android/

No, I mean when Facebook gets around to making their app native on Android like they did for iOS. They moved from html5 to native on iOS and performance doubled. Usage doubled along with it. Last I heard, Facebook's Android app was still html5, but you can bet they're working on that now.

Mobile has been a struggle for a lot of these web 2.0 companies. They really thought web was the future of everything, and the revelation that optimised apps are much more popular — at least in mobile computing — has been a real shock to them and a challenge to their core competencies.

Edit: Google tells me there are rumours that native Facebook for Android is in the testing phase. That would certainly explain the dogfooding poster. Sounds like they might not have enough Android users on their staff to do adequate testing. That tells a story right there.