THE TRUTH ABOUT SMARTPHONES: Our Exclusive Survey On iPhone vs Android
Recent news that Android has blasted past the iPhone in smartphone market share triggered a huge brawl among fans in both camps about whether the numbers were accurate and which platform would reign supreme.
Context & Ripple Effects
The iPhone-versus-Android argument predates this week's flare-up: back in July 2010, a Yankee Group attempt to set the record straight on iPhone and Android was already untangling claims the two camps kept making about each other. What changed by April 2011 is that Android has overtaken the iPhone in smartphone market share, turning a running fan war into a fight over whether the share numbers themselves are accurate.
Silicon Alley Insider's response is to run its own exclusive survey rather than referee secondhand data — a move aimed squarely at the loyalty question both sides keep conflating with raw share. The same corpus frames Android's rise as a 'freight train' bearing down on Research In Motion, so the stakes extend past the two platforms doing the arguing.
First-order effects
- Google gets its first hard datapoint on whether Android's newly claimed share lead translates into satisfied users who intend to stay, while Apple gets a counter-metric it can cite whenever raw share favors its rival.
- Research In Motion is the unnamed third party in the fight: every point of Android momentum documented here comes at the expense of a platform neither camp is defending.
Second-order effects
- Carriers and handset makers reading the survey will price the two ecosystems differently — switching-intent data feeds directly into subsidy and exclusivity decisions for upcoming 2011 lineups.
- If the fan brawl keeps questioning market-share methodology, research firms face pressure to publish methodology alongside numbers, since an disputed statistic is nearly worthless as a selling point for either platform.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward platform competition settling into two parallel scorecards — installed-base share versus user loyalty — with each side citing whichever metric it wins, a framing analysts would need to disentangle for years.
- Sustained Android volume growth against a premium single-vendor rival sets up a structural split between a many-maker open platform competing on price and breadth and a closed ecosystem competing on retention.
The trend: Smartphone platform rivalry is shifting from who sells more handsets this quarter to who retains users, forcing both camps and their analysts to argue over loyalty metrics as much as market share.