Those people don't buy apps, don't surf the web and probably don't really know they are running Android.
They are using their devices as feature phones or dumbphones.
Sources? Too many and all of them have been linked to in this forum in the last few days a hundred times.
Marketshare is worthless if those people are included, because they are not benefitting the owner of the ecosystem or the other people who earn profits in the ecosystem (aka developers) in any meaningful way.
If you think of game consoles, those companies often touting how high their marketshare and the game consoles sales are.
Because a higher marketshare means more developers will develop games for the system and all the people who have bought that system can then play those games.
Now think of someone who bought the Playstation 3 ONLY because it was one of the cheapest BluRay players around at the time of its release.
Someone who is not interested in games, doesn't have children or a partner who's interested in games.
Should he be counted in the marketshare?
If you were a developer, would you want him to be counted in the marketshare?
A more recent example will be the Ouya game console, which is running Android.
Many Android fans see it as the second coming of youknowwho and say how it will be a total success.
Total sales of the device have been (as far as i know it, the numbers are about a month old) 70k devices sold.
70k is absolutely NOTHING for a game console.
Whats making it worse is, that the Ouya is also one of the cheapest available Tegra 3 devices and many people in the boards mentioned how they are going to buy it to use it as a media player in the living room.
Like the Raspberry Pi, a very cheap developer board meant to be used by children. The full initial supply was bought by 30year old people who wanted to use it as a media player.
Will the Ouyas which will never see a game, because they are being used to stream the ripped bluray collection to the TV be counted as marketshare in gaming devices?
If you were to develop a game, would you want those devices to be counted as devices sold to gamers?
There are Android users who use their devices as much as the regular iOS users, there are also Android users who use their devices much more than the regular Android user - but both of them are in the minority and the majority of Android users don't use their devices as smartphones.
What other explanation is there, to explain why Android dwarfs iOS in "marketshare", but is even more dwarfed by iOS in statistics like web usage (please don't say that all Android users switch their browser agent), buying stuff online, paying for in-flight-wireless, app revenue etc.?