I disagree with both extremes. Apple's position isn't as bad as it would seem, given the huge difference in Android vs. Apple market share or installed base. These metrics overwhelmingly favor Android, but obviously, not all Android users are equal and certainly, not all Android users are equal to iPhone users. You can disagree all you want but while everyone is focussing on market share, Apple is cleaning up in revenue share, profit share, advertising dollars share, mind share etc. Until I see weakness in some of these categories I am not worried.
The market share and installed base numbers would be interesting to look at if one could ever get true and accurate data. In the U.S., we frequently see articles touting that Android is ahead in market share until Apple releases a new iPhone then the tendency is the other way. There is the "shipped" vs. "sold" discrepancy which makes it difficult to estimate and installed base on the Android side.
Also, I have known people who bought and Android, didn't like it, got it replace it with another Android, didn't like that and ended up getting an iPhone. In this case, the "market share" for Android was twice that of the iPhone but the installed base and every other metric that matters were 100% iPhone. From metrics that follow iOS vs. Android on the web and such, I suspect this sort of thing happens frequently enough that the installed base for iPhone is much higher than one would assume from the market share numbers. |
