Now, this may come as a shock to some of you, but it was recently reported by Canaccord Genuity analyst Mike Walkley that Android phone users actually want iPads over their Android tablet counterparts:
Apparently, given the choice between an Android tablet or an iPad, Android smartphone users are crushing on the sexy iPad.
Unfortunately, Walkley has no hard numbers to support his claim.
Fortunately, I have an argument to do just that.
Let’s be real here. You know how I said this piece of news might come as a shock to some of you? Well, I lied. I can’t imagine anyone is truly shocked by this at all. I don’t know of many people who are thoroughly satisfied with their Android phones, and I’ve never seen anyone ‘in the wild’ with an Android tablet. That’s not to say that Android is not a good OS, but it is certainly to say that the customer satisfaction rate of iOS is higher than that of Android. I don’t know of anyone who has switched from iPhone to Android, but I know countless people that have done the reverse.
Again, I don’t mean to start a Android/iOS war, but here I go…
Allow me to give you an example. Try texting someone on Android an image, and tell them to set it as their wallpaper. I’ll be damned if they can do it in any amount of time under 30-45 seconds (assuming they’ve never done it before — and doing it from a text message is key). The thing is that Android just has so many small, bothersome inconsistencies that iOS doesn’t have.
Or take a look at the world of developers. This survey taken at this year’s WWDC conference is rather telling. Sure, half of the developers at an Apple event are developing for Android as well, but every single one of them prefers iOS. And it all comes down to the superior user experience.
Bringing this all back around, I don’t think that this less-than-iOS-quality-user-experience is something that people want in a tablet — something quite possibly even more personal than a phone. Buying a tablet is clearly something that Android users see as an opportunity to try something else, something that they may even believe deep down provides a happier user experience. Specifically, iOS. There’s no contract and monthly fee, and a tablet isn’t something that is used nearly as often as a phone, so assuming one is a big Android fan, friends and neighbors never need about the iOS adultery that you’ve committed.
Thing is though, cheat once, and who’s to say that you’ll stop there? I bet that this lust for an iOS tablet displayed by Android phone users is only the first step. Before you know it, they’ll have purchased one, divorced their Android phone, and moved in with a new shiny iPhone. At one point, Android phones and their cheaper prices were needed in order to attract a larger demographic of people into the smartphone market. Now, on the other hand, that is no longer true. As Android phone prices rise to the likes of the iPhone, iPhone prices remain the same, and older models are available on the cheap, and possibly in the near future for free.
See what happens when you give in to temptation?
Apparently you become converted to an Apple fanboy, and force me to use cheesy metaphors.
But don’t worry all you Android users. We won’t tell a soul.
Source: Canaccord Genuity
Via: MacLife and AllThingsD
