According to a recent market research study that has been carried out by Gartner, a technology research company, Android phones far outsell Apple iPhones, Blackberry phones and Microsoft phones. Gartner said that in the first four months of the year, the sale of Android phones amounted to 74.4 percent of the total market share. Apple stands in the second place at 18.2 percent with the sale of iPhones. The third placed is Blackberry with 3 percent of the sales and fourth comes Microsoft with 2.9 percent. Samsung’s Bada platform comes next with 0.7 percent. Symbian, the once very popular operating system that used to run on the Nokia smartphones, is only at 0.6 percent. Any other type of operating system forms part of the remaining 0.3 percent.
In my opinion there are certain obvious reasons why the figures are the way they are:
- Price: Apple has always been selling the iPhones at premium prices. While the price of higher end Android smartphones like the Galaxy S4 and HTC One may be comparable to the price of an iPhone 5 16GB, basic Android smartphones can be bought for only a fraction of the price of an iPhone. In other words there are many Android models that are perfectly suitable for those who are not power users and those who can afford to pay premium prices.
- Variety: Apple produces only one type of iPhone and every new iPhone version does not look very different from the version before it. On the other hand, Android smartphones come in every size and colour, some models are water resistant, some models have a keyboard and some models have a removable battery. In other words, there exists an Android phone to satisfy every need and taste.
- Open system: Android has always been open source which allows anyone to customize the operating system to his or her needs. Companies selling Android smartphones have long been creating their own versions of the Android operating system, some of which have been heavily customized.
- Wide apps support: Android and iOS are both heavily supported platforms and one of the main reasons why Android phones and iPhones sell so much is the wide variety of apps available. Unfortunately, both the Blackberry OS and Microsoft’s OS are poorly supported platforms when it comes to the number of available apps. However, Android still has an advantage over Apple when apps are concerned given that Apple’s iOS app approval process is much more cumbersome than that for the Android OS.
