Apple’s iOS Platform, as well as Google’s Android, has become more than just an operating system. They are both now mobile developing platforms that manifest completely different styles of life, dividing users into two adversary camps. These two platforms are highly competitive on the smartphone market despite their alternate ups and downs.
Android, with its new and unprecedented characteristics that promise various development perspectives as well as the introduction of new applications, is truly loved by a lot of users across the globe. However, the aim of this paper is to highlight not qualitative but scale advantages of the Android platform in the USA and in Europe. The comparison is performed on the basis of Android’s steady growth in the smartphone field (Cinar 3).
Despite the overwhelming popularity of Apple’s products and lifestyle that the company promotes, it is worth noticing that in 2015 the market share of Apple in the USA has fallen to its lowest point for the whole year. The release of new models raised Apple’s popularity in foreign markets, especially in China. Despite this fact, the number of American users striving to replace their smartphones for the upgraded versions turned out to be much lower than expected (Villapaz par. 1).
The situation did not change at the beginning of 2016. The statistics for the first quarter showed that Android, which offers low-cost gadgets with a decent set of characteristics, grew significantly not only in the USA but also in Europe. Its market share increased to more than 75 percent (in comparison with 65 percent in the USA) (Villapaz par. 3).
However, the proponents of Apple deny the fact that Android continues crushing iOS on the market. Their main point is that despite its smaller share, Apple still makes more money than all the other smartphone producers combined. In fact, in terms of profit, the main rival of Apple is not Android, Nokia, or Blackberry but Samsung. The cause of such a discrepancy between the market share and the company’s benefit lies in the fact that most Android devices are at least twice as cheap as Apple’s products. Despite the current advantage of Apple in profit-making, Android’s dominance both in market share and in-app downloads offers excellent prospects for the company in the long run (Sharma 1967).
Besides its own merits and growing popularity, Android owes its position not least of all to Google, which offers quite a number of facilities, including Google maps, Google documents, Google voice, and others. Surveys show that a lot of users opt for Android because they feel comfortable staying with tried-and-true Google services. Thus, the scale of the owner-company adds value to the platform (Sharma, 1968).
Comparing iOS and Android, we should bear in mind that both operating systems have high demand due to the advanced features that they offer. They both leave other competitors far behind, which allows claiming that the scale of each of them is unprecedented. However, Apple stays competitive mainly because its target audience is composed of users with a high level of income (the factor that compensates for all the losses), whereas Android’s market share is really growing (Sharma 1968).
It is worth noticing in conclusion that in the nearest future, Google is going to benefit remarkably from its open-source Android platform, which is now the fastest-growing of all. Unlike Apple, it can be embedded in practically any gadget, which makes the system universal and ensures its excellence simultaneously in quality, cost, and scale.
Works Cited
Cinar, Onur. “Android Platform.” Android Quick APIs Reference. Apress, 2015. 1-14.
Sharma, Kavita. “Android in opposition to iPhone.” International Journal on Computer Science and Engineering 3.5 (2011): 1965-1969.
Villapaz, Luke. International Business Times. 2015. Web.