Why Aren’t Android Users Actually Using Their Handsets?

 

When it comes to market share, humanoid is crushing iOS. But if you look at usage, the relationship is flipped on its head. And that’s weird.

In the fourth quarter of 2012, Android made up 70 part of the smartphone market fit to IDC’s numbers. iOS held a mere 21 pct. Gartner’s estimates for the equal period show the same breakdown.

Let’s contrast that with most mobile web-browsing stats. The latest from Net Applications, which tracked 160 cardinal visits to over 40,000 websites last month, found Safari for iOS captured more than 61 percent of mobile web traffic. Android’s web browser made up a third.

The numbers look correspondent for inflight Wi-Fi usage, with iOS turns making up 84 percent of the mobile devices apply during flights, according to Gogo. Ooyala, a company that sees 200 million curious video viewers worldwide, similarly found that iOS users watch in devil miens as much mobile video than their Android compatriots.

With a third of the devices in users’ hands, iOS is used two to five generation more than Android. What gives?

There are a few factors at play.

iOS users skewed slightly younger than Android device owners. 19 percent of iOS owners fall in the 18-24 year old age square bracket; 16 percent of Android owners do. Perhaps culturally, these folks fly the coop to be obsessively glued to their touchscreens every waking and non-waking flake of the day more so than older mobile device users.

Android owners also seem to use their devices more on the go, magic spell iOS users will settle in for long sessions on their smartphone. Two-thirds of online legal action on Android phones is conducted over a cellular connection, Comscore found, fleck more than half of all time spent online on iPhones happens over WiFi.

Unsurprisingly then, Android users regularly consume more entropy than their iOS-using peers. With this in mind, it makes particular sense that Android users would watch less(prenominal) high-bandwidth video than iOS device owners.

As for inflight WiFi usage, iOS has an advantage in two respects. First, it dominates the tablet space: Half of in-flight Wi-Fi traffic comes from iPads alone. Second, its users trend towards cosmos more affluent. According to Comscore, 41 percent of iOS users fall at heart the $100k or higher income bracket compared with only 24 percent of Android users. They can afford to pay for inflight WiFi, and take flights that plead inflight Wi-Fi in the first place.

This odd usage discrepancy amongst iOS and Android could be disappearing though. A survey make in March questioning Galaxy S trine owners and iPhone owners found very little difference in the way they use their mobile devices.

Materials taken from WIRED