That is probably due to a a lot of people holding onto their phones longer because of the high price of the newer iPhones, not to mention other outside influences.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Android Bosses iPhone in Smartphone Activation Market Share
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I wonder if Apple could stand to benefit from an 18month release schedule for phones, rather than the annual cycle currently.
It would allow each model to be a bigger jump from it's predecessor, giving people more of an incentive to upgrade. It would also align better with (US) carriers' 3-year upgrade cycles.
It would allow each model to be a bigger jump from it's predecessor, giving people more of an incentive to upgrade. It would also align better with (US) carriers' 3-year upgrade cycles.
If your insinuation is that Apple doesn't care about its customers, I think you'd be hard-pressed to back that up. For example...
Forbes Magazine: The Top 100 Most Customer-Centric Companies Of 2022
Technology
1. Apple. Apple was a leader in pandemic response as it donated millions of face masks, partnered with Google to lead contact tracing efforts, and gave its entire retail staff unlimited paid sick leave. In 2021, Apple announced DIY repairs to provide faster and better service to customers.
...and I could go on and list years and years worth of Apple being at the leading edge of Customer Satisfaction surveys.
I AM old enough to remember the past. But none of that has much to do with Apple.
Sure, who wouldn't like Apple to be more consumer-friendly?
However, their "Ladder & Lock-in" tactic is now well-known. the Ladder part is when you want to buy reasonable stuff, but the next option $200 ahead has a feature you'd love to have, and then for just $150 more you can have this or that as well... Of course, they fragment product lines to make this continuous ladder and drive us nuts.
Just one link on this topic: https://talkbackcomms.com/blogs/news/ladder
Last edited:
There’s nothing wrong with using headline as is. It’s an unconventional world to use for sore, but such things tend to increase clicks and views, and within the context, is not click bait. You just have to read the article to find out what the exact meaning is.
Yeah, wouldn't mind 18-month or 2yr cycle. Apple is clearly tucked in this 1yr cycle and must put up with marketing when they can't deliver (Hey Mother Nature!). But their competition is multi-branded and issues flagship phones almost each week, guess Apple can't slow the pace.
Ok. I will give it a shot. Note that some of whats below is not IOS's fault - its choices made by Apple:
1) Notifications in IOS are a joke. If you have used Android, you know exactly what I mean.
2) Home screen layout - I can make it my own as opposed to Apple's own.
3) I can use the 'real' firefox with Ublock instead of being stuck with Webkit.
4) File Management easier, more flexible, more intuitive on Android.
5) The Back button
Basically when I buy an Android phone I can make it look and work the way I want. With an Iphone the best I can do is make it look and work the way Apple wants. I want freedom of choice.
I will admit if I used a Mac, an Ipad and an Apple watch I might be stuck with IOS. Luckily I use Windows and don't have a tablet or a watch so I am not captive to an ecosystem.
Mid and high end phones have very good for the past few years.
Updates keeps features coming year after year.
Most people keep them in cases and with screen protectors so they likely last physically longer.
Now it's down to making a consumer WANT buy the newest phone, not NEED to buy the newest phone every year.
Updates keeps features coming year after year.
Most people keep them in cases and with screen protectors so they likely last physically longer.
Now it's down to making a consumer WANT buy the newest phone, not NEED to buy the newest phone every year.
Apple chooses not to compete too much at the ultra low-end (the free with a prepaid card market, like the Moto E series etc) which is where most Android phone sales are, at least globally. So it stands to reason that Apple will never have the lion's share of the smartphone market. Most people globally don't have the resources to buy an iPhone, even a several years old used iPhone.
Even in the US, a lot of people are on prepaid or simply don't want a $30+/month phone payment so they don't buy iPhones. A midrange Android device like the Moto G or Samsung A15 or what have you is plenty for nearly everyone, and they're often free with a prepaid plan.
Even in the US, a lot of people are on prepaid or simply don't want a $30+/month phone payment so they don't buy iPhones. A midrange Android device like the Moto G or Samsung A15 or what have you is plenty for nearly everyone, and they're often free with a prepaid plan.
Could not agree more. iOS notifications are the bane of my existence and I have no idea how Apple is content to let them be so bad.
It's always been behind LOL, come on man! Seriously? How long did it take Apple to implement basic copy/paste? I mean to this day, there's no file browser!!!
There's just nothing that exciting or compelling. I don't think it's the end of the world, but we need to be honest about what this situation is.
Didn't they put that in iOS 2? iOS 3 at the latest. And it was done in a much better way than anyone else at the time
From the user perspective, there it behaves just a little different. But when you start writing programs Android is a real OS with a lot of well thought out programming patterns. iOS feels just like a bunch of APIs somehow put together.
iPhones being activated and lasting longer in service than its competitors:
"This trend appears to impact iPhone sales more significantly than those of Android devices, suggesting Apple may need to adjust its strategy to regain market momentum."
Journalists take: This is a crisis for Apple!
"This trend appears to impact iPhone sales more significantly than those of Android devices, suggesting Apple may need to adjust its strategy to regain market momentum."
Journalists take: This is a crisis for Apple!
Activations are a pretty good proxy for sales, but as CIRP itself suggested from a user standpoint if actual usage share isn't decreasing, lower activations is arguably a good thing--it most likely means that people are happy with what they have, don't feel the need to upgrade, and if usage share isn't decreasing they're not switching platforms, either.
That last sentence, though, does not logically follow from the previous statement. If Apple and Android devices both have exactly the same average lifespan in the hands of consumers, then this would be true--a lower fraction of activations would mean that Apple is also losing "real" share.
If on the other hand Android devices do not, on average, last as long in a consumer's hands as an iPhone--which I have no evidence of but suspect is the case--then that statement could not only be wrong, but completely backwards--it does not necessarily suggest Apple needs to adjust anything, if actual usage share is not decreasing, and in fact usage share could even be increasing if the device-lifespan gap is long enough. If that's the case, Apple should keep doing exactly what it's doing--making devices people are happy with and are so good and durable people don't need or want to replace them.
Smartphones, like laptops and desktops, are a fairly mature technology at this point--they've been available and improving for a couple of decades, and any device made in the last few years should be able to do more or less anything the average consumer needs pretty well. Slowing sales in general is not a sign of any failing, it's a sign of a success, in the same way having 7-year-old iMacs still chugging along happily at work, with no one complaining about using them, is a sign of a good product.
The "take it to the extreme to test the theory" method demonstrates: In a hypothetical world where the average iPhone was miraculously good and lasted 10 years before anyone upgraded, and Android phones were so spectacularly awful that all of them broke and needed replacing in 1 year, even with 90% real usage share iPhones would have lower activations than Androids, and it certainly wouldn't be a sign of weakness or suggestion of "loss of momentum".
Well the entire article is about, "New iPhone activations are down to a low not seen in the U.S. smartphone market for the last six years". So I am not sure what planet you live on to be able to say, "Clearly over the last many years the above hasn’t hurt apple.", but I don't live on that planet.
Now you might say, "but, but, but Apple profits are still good." And that is true, but only because you are paying more for less. There can be no other objective analysis.
Wouldn't Apple have like 80% of activations on phones over $1,000? Apple isn't going to do great if compared to the entire industry if their prices are much higher than any competitors. If they are going to cater to the smallest percentage of people with the deepest pockets, they're going to have lower numbers but higher revenue. Apple could beat out all the companies if it had a price war but that means they would need to hire more people to make phones, make more supplier deals, and have more overall overhead with less profit per device. That is not what they want.
Apple has said more than once it doesn’t expect its iPhone customers to be perpetual upgraders. Now I don’t know what planet you live on but apple has an entire ecosystem of services and products to spend money on. I don’t live in the planet that apple is a one trick pony.
There can be no other way to describe the above as subjective. Value is in the eyes of the beholder.
You could not be more wrong on this. Apple has an excellent developer ecosystem, far beyond the zoo of different programming languages on Android (Java, Kotlin, Dart—it feels like Google itself doesn’t even know what their direction is), much easier to incorporate native C/C++ systems on iOS and of course, iOS is a great OS to develop for, besides doing the actual development on macOS, which is a "real OS," as you say. There is zero advantage to Android being open as it is in the process of developing apps. Apple has better frameworks and tools and has advanced with much greater speed regarding additions to their ecosystems and new frameworks. Documentation might lack a bit in some cases, but this is even worse for Google in my experience.
While that sounds somewhat plausible, iPhones have been made out of metal and glass in some shape or form since the iPhone 4 and have been receiving long-term software updates since at least the iPhone 6, if not before that.
I struggle to see how this alone could have impacted trends since March '23 and so suspect that there will be other issues as well.
Android phones are equally unlikely to require more frequent replacements in that period, so chances are that this would have an impact on market share.
Whether it's a massively significant impact in the long-term remains to be seen.
Apple's services live and die with the iPhone and so less market share would be concerning in that sense.