Android now dominating UK Smartphones

Joflaherty

Guys,
No really a surprise but Android now dominating smartphone sales in the UK.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5houQe6aA4KeO4QLuTgM_BBdDqNWw?docId=N0372381301843383004A

I wonder what the statistics are in Ireland?

J

tman

"Hosted by Google"

Hmmmm.......

flynnduism

The only stats I can find for Ireland show Android being way behind iOS on mobile devices, which seems like it's going to be the case here for a long time yet

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-IE-monthly-201104-201104-bar

knuth

MYE DAS CAR IZ FASTUR THAN UR DAZ CAR

//thread

Oafley Jones

flynnduism wrote: »

The only stats I can find for Ireland show Android being way behind iOS on mobile devices, which seems like it's going to be the case here for a long time yet

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-IE-monthly-201104-201104-bar

I'm guessing that a large percentage of that is made up by the iPod touch. I'd see far more Android phones than iPhones around the place.

god's toy

flynnduism wrote: »

The only stats I can find for Ireland show Android being way behind iOS on mobile devices, which seems like it's going to be the case here for a long time yet

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-IE-monthly-201104-201104-bar

Is that counter right? A number of tech sites in the usa were reporting a few months back that android overtook RIM as the number one there.
and that ios was 3rd.

http://www.bgr.com/2011/01/06/android-overtakes-ios-in-u-s-smartphone-subscribers-trails-only-rim/

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/android-ios-blackberry-bbm-droid,news-10345.html

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/21472-android-overtakes-ios-in-us-smartphone-users

Royale with Cheese

Why do all companies still by far prioritise iPhone app development over Android then? If the company I work for wanted an in house app for submitting your time and expenses they'd ask for an iPhone one and that's about it I'd say.

god's toy

More money to be made from it perhaps? Don't think apps sell on android like they do on iOS.

Plus you get the delay factor where companies are slow to catch on and change with the times.

mickoneill30

One of our media guys was showing me the stats on our website this week. We're a pretty large company with loads of business customers. Ireland / UK and mainland Europe.

IOS hits outnumbers Android by about 3 to one.
Android had also grown by about 20% in the last month or two.

Business people don't have a clue though
Our CCO was asking for an IPhone a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't convince him even to look at Android. When I asked him why he had no argument. I was getting the "Iphone is good" argument.
There's also a project coming up where we'll have to buy a load of tablets for a particular task. Our CEO is pushing IPads for no other reason than that's what she's seen. I'll educate her though. It's going to cost a lot of money so the usual "because it's shiny" argument won't work when decent money's involved

Breezer

I've found (just from chatting to people, nothing official) that 2 groups of people buy Android phones in Ireland: tech nerds and people who don't really know what they're buying. Outside of those groups, most people who can afford an iPhone seem to go for one.

I've had a lot of people look at my HTC Hero and say "Oh it's sort of like an iPhone, bet you can't wait to get a real one when you start working in a few months." And funny reactions from them when I say I find iPhones too limited in what they can do. Only one person ever wowed over my Hero back when it was new, and he was Canadian.

Are Android phones marketed far better in the UK? The networks and Samsung seem to be upping the ante here recently. I notice Meteor are now calling themselves "the Android specialists."

tman

Breezer wrote: »

Are Android phones marketed far better in the UK? The networks and Samsung seem to be upping the ante here recently. I notice Meteor are now calling themselves "the Android specialists."

Can't really compare it to Ireland (have barely been back in 2 years), but there's some seriously prominent ads for Android phones around London (the Desire HD being one of the main ones)
Can't remember the last time I saw a poster with an iPhone 4 on it...

flynnduism

yeah Android handsets are becoming popular among certain groups (like tech nerds as mentioned), but they're still nowhere near as popular as they are in the UK and US

most people I know (bar those who are tech-savvy) haven't a clue what android is - they're not advertised here that much

seanybiker

A few more of my friends are starting to get the android phones. Low end phones but they seem happy with them

Zonda999

Tbh, it just makes us look less intelligent on things technical if iOS is still way ahead of android in this country. I cant help but feel though, thats its still the "cool" thing to have, the iphone that is, as opposed to an android handset. I've no doubt that handsets like the galaxy s and desire are slowly changing that as time goes on but when your average Joe Soap thinks smartphone, they think iphone still, theres no doubt over that either. All you need to do is look at adverts.ie, iphones still hold their value way better than any other type of phone

As for meteor saying they're the android experts, thats pretty much what they have to do considering they're the only network that doesn't have the iphone. Androids best chance of getting a greater market share in this country is with handsets in the 100 - 200€ category

listermint

Irish people in the main are sheep. Simple.

Royale with Cheese

People who've played with my phone have complained about such things as the pinch to zoom (which works absolutely fine) not being as smooth as on the iPhone.

People seem far too caught up with insignificant details like that instead of bigger details like Android has flash and people are allowed to release whatever apps they want for it. Still can't get over the fact people think it's acceptable to have to convert video files from avi instead of Apple just letting somebody release an xvid player for iPhone.

jwcurtin

listermint wrote: »

Irish people in the main are sheep. Simple.

This is very true... Although we're very lucky with our mobile tariffs (compared to the states), we follow the trend of the US & UK markets. iOS (in my opinion) will be overtaken at some stage in 2012 when Android phones become the norm here. But then again we don't know what Apple have up their sleeve....

Breezer

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

People who've played with my phone have complained about such things as the pinch to zoom (which works absolutely fine) not being as smooth as on the iPhone.

What phone do you have? In fairness, I can see their point, especially if it's an older phone like my Hero. The 3GS was just way more fluid and nicer to use for most things, albeit with a much more limited feature set. If it's a newer HTC or Galaxy S I'm not sure there's much difference, especially when you take text reflow into account.

iPhones do a lot of what they do well (notifications come to mind as a big exception). There's just a lot of stuff they can't do.

Royale with Cheese

Breezer wrote: »

What phone do you have? In fairness, I can see their point, especially if it's an older phone like my Hero. The 3GS was just way more fluid and nicer to use for most things, albeit with a much more limited feature set. If it's a newer HTC or Galaxy S I'm not sure there's much difference, especially when you take text reflow into account.

iPhones do a lot of what they do well (notifications come to mind as a big exception). There's just a lot of stuff they can't do.

It's a Desire running 2.2. Really the pinch to zoom works absolutely fine.

Breezer

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

It's a Desire running 2.2. Really the pinch to zoom works absolutely fine.

Yeah I've never noticed a problem with the pinch to zoom on that. I think it seems more stuttery than the iPhone because of the text reflow immediately afterwards. Which is a major advantage of the Android browser over the Mobile Safari IMO.

WolfForager

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

It's a Desire running 2.2. Really the pinch to zoom works absolutely fine.

Aren't we (Desire users) getting 2.3 soon? I've heard that "smooths" some of the pinching and what not!

On topic: Most of my mates prefer the iPhone because "It's shiny" and its "made by Apple". I was talking to a few of them recently however and when i said that Android was developed by Google it was like something clicked with them, "Oh really? I didn't know that...". I really think that Android when advertised should have a fairly prominent "Google" logo thrown in there, it is the most recognizable brand in the world!

srsly78

mickoneill30 wrote: »

One of our media guys was showing me the stats on our website this week. We're a pretty large company with loads of business customers. Ireland / UK and mainland Europe.

IOS hits outnumbers Android by about 3 to one.
Android had also grown by about 20% in the last month or two.

Business people don't have a clue though
Our CCO was asking for an IPhone a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't convince him even to look at Android. When I asked him why he had no argument. I was getting the "Iphone is good" argument.
There's also a project coming up where we'll have to buy a load of tablets for a particular task. Our CEO is pushing IPads for no other reason than that's what she's seen. I'll educate her though. It's going to cost a lot of money so the usual "because it's shiny" argument won't work when decent money's involved

The few times I've tested this I've noticed the Android browser advertises it's user-agent as "Mobile Safari", exactly the same as the iphone. As such, I would love to know how these "media guys" tell the difference.

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

Royale with Cheese

Captain Morgan wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

To be fair the iPhone markets itself these days, it's the lack of Android advertisement that's really causing attitudes like the one you quoted.

Android needs a serious marketing campaign to get the average user to realise it's not just some cheap iPhone alternative. Any advertisement I've seen is from individual manufacturers. They might hint at android by sticking the logo in the ad somewhere but the average user isn't gonna know what a green robot thing means. So as stated previously on this thread, you'll end up with a load of people who might not even know they have an android phone and wouldn't be able to see the benefits of a standardised platform.

Things will change though, I remember a time when everyone in this country was afraid to use something that wasn't a Nokia.

Zonda999

Not deliberately trying to dumb down the irish smartphone buying public than this thread has done already but i actually think a lot of them are'nt even aware of what mobile OS' even are. I mean, i reckon you could ask a lot of Irish iphone users, "what's iOS?" and a lot of them wouldnt even know. And therein lies a problem with android's expansion. I dont think a lot of people are even aware that there could be phone interface that could be the same across many manufacturers, nor would they care if they knew. All they've known for the last 3 and a half years is that "iphone" is a byword for the best phone you can get and thats something that is constantly being reinforced by apple's ingenious marketing drive.

Like some one above mentioned, there really has to be more done to get people talking about android and what it even is

mickoneill30

srsly78 wrote: »

The few times I've tested this I've noticed the Android browser advertises it's user-agent as "Mobile Safari", exactly the same as the iphone. As such, I would love to know how these "media guys" tell the difference.

It's not hard to check.

You can view your user agent simply by going to this site.
http://www.iopus.com/imacros/demo/v5/user-agent.htm

From my PC I get

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.204 Safari/534.16 for Chrome.

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0) for IE.

On Android my user agent using Dolphin was shown as
Android 2.2.1 etc. when I have it set to be identified as Android.

When I set Dolphin to Desktop it identifies as
Mozilla etc.
I wouldn't expect your average Android user to know how to (or even that they can) change their User Agent settings.

That stuff is easily picked up by a web server and logged if you have it set up to do so.

PogMoThoin

I also use Dolphin and have that desktop/android toggle addon, but I must admin i spend most of the time in desktop mode

MiCr0

Oafley Jones wrote: »

I'm guessing that a large percentage of that is made up by the iPod touch. I'd see far more Android phones than iPhones around the place.

If you look @ mobile browser instead of mobile OS you get a better breakdown

Ireland
Mobile Browser Market Share %
iPhone 50.71
iPod Touch 16.58
Android 11.73

UK
Mobile Browser Market Share %
BlackBerry 36.61
iPhone 31.88
iPod Touch 9.94
Android 9.43

Europe
Mobile Browser Market Share %
iPhone 36.06
BlackBerry 16.68
Android 11.81
Opera 11.01
Nokia 9.32
iPod Touch 8.84

mickoneill30

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I also use Dolphin and have that desktop/android toggle addon, but I must admin i spend most of the time in desktop mode

I'd say a reasonable amount of Boards users do too but overall I'm not sure if that would be skewing the results too much for the kind of users I'd be expecting on our companys website.

bd250110

At the end of the day it does not much matter that Android sells more, less or about the same as anyone else. Apple has lines out the door and something approaching global hysteria for each new iPhone / iPad. Apple needs to deliver killer user experiences each time, because they want to 'trap' customers in the apple Eco-system, it starts with an iPad/iPhone, etc and moves onto a mac/MacBook. Google, on the other hand is not so much interested in the hardware side of things, what they want to do is fill more of users lives with google ads wither this be by google services and/or devices is of little importance to them. But android helps to get more eyes cast on googles pages and ads every day.

Both are good platforms. Individuals need to decide what suits them best. The rest is willy waving.