iOS Users Are A Lot More Web-Savvy Compared To Android Users

Google has been able to beat Apple in terms of volume. Android sales have far outdone iPhone sales by a significant margin. However, despite this, the mobile web traffic generated by Android devices is a lot lower than that of iOS devices, a revelation made by IBM through Black Friday data.


IBM Black Friday data

To give you a perspective of Android’s overwhelming market share, the platform currently owns 75% of the smartphone market. iPhone, on the other hand, accounts for merely 15% of the market. In other words, for every iPhone out there, there are five Android smartphones being used.

But the astonishing part is that despite this difference, iOS devices still generate a lot more web traffic than Android devices. This was manifest during the Black Friday sales when 20% of online sales were done using iOS devices and a mere 5.5% were completed through Android devices.

Add to this another bit of info: nearly 60% of the mobile web traffic comes from iOS devices and only 20% is generated through Android. This disparity is baffling for the analysts and so far, no one has been able to discern a definite reason for this.

How to explain this?
There are of course a number of theories which may explain the phenomenon. In my opinion, though, we need to consider the fact that Android is highly fragmented between multiple devices, multiple vendors and multiple software iterations.

While a Windows Phone 8 user may be glad to perform tasks online through his device, someone tooling an Android device with Gingerbread may not be as enthusiastic. In other words, a fair comparison between the traffic generated by iOS and Android devices can only be done when we pit, for example, iPhone against only the top-end Android smartphones.

That way, we will be able to compare the two platforms on an even field. But given those conditions, Android may not be able to equal or surpass iPhone in terms of sales.

Courtesy: Business Insider

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Salman

Salman Latif is a software engineer with a specific interest in social media, big data and real-world solutions using the two.Other than that, he is a bit of a gypsy. He also writes in his own blog. You can find him on Google+ and Twitter .

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Tsais

    Don’t make me laugh!

    Being online non stop has nothing to do with “web savvy”
    Savvy people spend less time online more effectively.

    Of course, if you call someone who’s wasting time on Facebook all day, sharing every sneeze “savvy” then maybe, we just need to redefine the word…

  2. flamencoguy

    Many of the Android tablets sold are the 7 inch models and also cheaper models. These could be given to kids to learn about web, do homework, play games etc. So maybe not heavy users. Maybe many of the iPads are used to watch porn? Download movies, Netflix. Who knows?
    But more web-savvy? What does that really mean? What’s so difficult about going to different websites. FB, Twitting, maybe doing searches, forums, mostly text data. Certainly Android users are more tech savvy. Refreshing ROMs (cyanogenMod) , “rooting”, customizing, inserting microSD cards, dual SIMs. replacing batteries.
    iOS users just throw it out and buy a new one. Not very green either.

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