Why does the iphone not sell more than androids in the Western world?

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Commodus

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2004
9,215
6,820
136
Exactly.

I have an Android phone because I prefer the OS and UI. It really isn't that complicated. I think the iPhone is an awesome device, it just isn't for me at this time. To each their own. Not sure why the OP has such a hard time grasping such a simple concept.

Or, for that matter, others in this thread...

Despite what it sometimes sounds like, I'm very cool with Android. I know it's more flexible and that there will be hardware that does what an iPhone can't, but probably should. My beef is when people are clearly making Google's platform out to be something it's not. Most people aren't choosing Android because they're champions of freedom. You cannot find an Android smartphone that outperforms an iPhone 6s while costing half as much. These statements are based on fantasies of 'enlightened' Android users fighting mindless iOS masses, not the far less glamorous reality where things like app selection, budgets and availability are more important than ideology.

You prefer Android, or the hardware it runs on? Great! You probably have good reasons. But don't pretend that it's better at everything (or even most things), evidence be damned... or that iPhone users are suffering under some terrible yoke of oppression. It's possible to justify your preferences without delegitimizing people who don't see things your way.

The real answers for why Apple doesn't outsell other brands in the West? It's just one vendor among many, and it targets the higher end of the price spectrum. It's very hard to maintain majority control when you're purposefully narrowing your scope. And frankly, I don't think Apple cares nearly as much about market share as forum goers want it to. It'd rather maintain its profit while vendors like Samsung and Lenovo try to kill themselves in the name of selling more units.
 

kpkp

Senior member
Oct 11, 2012
468
0
76
Let's turn the question around and ask how come so many people in the west are so monotonous that they are happy with an iPhone, a phone "everyone" has.
 

mikegg

Platinum Member
Jan 30, 2010
2,080
628
136
Because Android phones are cheaper. If price was equal, Android would hold 10% market share.

The 10% market are geeks, people who want to install mods, etc.
 

mrochester

Senior member
Aug 16, 2014
471
16
91
Because Android phones are cheaper. If price was equal, Android would hold 10% market share.

The 10% market are geeks, people who want to install mods, etc.

Yeah I suspect Apple would have a much higher share of the market if their phones were cheaper. But we all know Apple just doesn't want to play that game.
 

mikegg

Platinum Member
Jan 30, 2010
2,080
628
136
IPhones don't even come close to customization options that are provided by android. Period.

Majority of People don't buy iPhone because it have great performance, etc. They buy it for brand name that's all.

For everything else including customizations, openness, options etc there is android. Even for developers and power users nothing come close to android flexibility.

So, you spend that kind of money on iPhone because you want the brand name. IPhone eco system is preety much closed. There is nothing much you can do about it.

And please don't compare the performance of Rs10,000 android with Rs60,000 iPhone.
Performance, multitasking and power wise high end androids beats iPhone at half the price. Get your facts right.
Ram is most important for multi tasking. It's now that apple have provided 2GB ram from 1GB in iPhone 5S. While androids are providing 3-4GB from long before.

Also, you want to say that quad cores and octa cores in the same generation are worse than dual cores? Try converting or editing a video on a mobile. And you would know what a huge difference it makes to have a quad core or octa core over dual core in the same generation.

I think that's wrong. I had a Google Nexus and it was laggy as hell. I switched to a iPhone 3G, that's right, iPhone 3G and it was smoother.

iPhones are widely known as having smoother interface than Android phones.

Now, the iPhone 6S is the most powerful in the world. So it's not true that if you want performance, you want Android.
 

luv2liv

Diamond Member
Dec 27, 2001
3,506
95
91
What do you need the most powerful phone for? You seriously gonna edit 4k on that puny screen? Talk about gimmicks. 95% of the people I know use their phones for text, Web, photos, videos,emails, and maybe voice. They don't need anything more than 1gb of ram. Yet they still buy the latest iPhones each year. They think it's a status symbol while driving a beat up Honda or Toyota. Really odd how a phone is now a status symbol while mansions are not anymore
 

StrangerGuy

Diamond Member
May 9, 2004
8,443
124
106
What do you need the most powerful phone for? You seriously gonna edit 4k on that puny screen? Talk about gimmicks. 95% of the people I know use their phones for text, Web, photos, videos,emails, and maybe voice. They don't need anything more than 1gb of ram. Yet they still buy the latest iPhones each year. They think it's a status symbol while driving a beat up Honda or Toyota. Really odd how a phone is now a status symbol while mansions are not anymore

And iPhones as a status symbol to drive up demand is a bad thing for Apple because?

Samsung or any other Android OEM would totally kill to have a mere 10% of iPhone profits (~90% of entire smartphone market). In the case of Samsung who now has 15% of total smartphone profits that will be a massive ~70% increase in profits, much less others like LG or Sony who is only breaking even or losing money in the Android business.
 

mrochester

Senior member
Aug 16, 2014
471
16
91
What do you need the most powerful phone for? You seriously gonna edit 4k on that puny screen? Talk about gimmicks. 95% of the people I know use their phones for text, Web, photos, videos,emails, and maybe voice. They don't need anything more than 1gb of ram. Yet they still buy the latest iPhones each year. They think it's a status symbol while driving a beat up Honda or Toyota. Really odd how a phone is now a status symbol while mansions are not anymore

I don't think you can call the iPhone a status symbol given how prevelant they are. The iPhone is the best selling smartphone on the market after all.
 
Sep 25, 2015
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Or, for that matter, others in this thread...

Despite what it sometimes sounds like, I'm very cool with Android. I know it's more flexible and that there will be hardware that does what an iPhone can't, but probably should. My beef is when people are clearly making Google's platform out to be something it's not. Most people aren't choosing Android because they're champions of freedom. You cannot find an Android smartphone that outperforms an iPhone 6s while costing half as much. These statements are based on fantasies of 'enlightened' Android users fighting mindless iOS masses, not the far less glamorous reality where things like app selection, budgets and availability are more important than ideology.

You prefer Android, or the hardware it runs on? Great! You probably have good reasons. But don't pretend that it's better at everything (or even most things), evidence be damned... or that iPhone users are suffering under some terrible yoke of oppression. It's possible to justify your preferences without delegitimizing people who don't see things your way.

The real answers for why Apple doesn't outsell other brands in the West? It's just one vendor among many, and it targets the higher end of the price spectrum. It's very hard to maintain majority control when you're purposefully narrowing your scope. And frankly, I don't think Apple cares nearly as much about market share as forum goers want it to. It'd rather maintain its profit while vendors like Samsung and Lenovo try to kill themselves in the name of selling more units.

Agree 100%.
 

gorcorps

aka Brandon
Jul 18, 2004
30,741
456
126
LOL, that's what I was wondering.

I transfer over bluetooth at work

When I plug my phone into the PC to transfer photos it takes FOREVER to load all the thumbnails, and it reloads them every single time for some reason. I can't transfer over wifi at work because my phone isn't approved to get on the network... so I transfer over bluetooth. It truly is my best option at work.

So sick of people thinking that just because they don't use something, it means it's completely worthless to everyone.
 

mrochester

Senior member
Aug 16, 2014
471
16
91
I transfer over bluetooth at work

When I plug my phone into the PC to transfer photos it takes FOREVER to load all the thumbnails, and it reloads them every single time for some reason. I can't transfer over wifi at work because my phone isn't approved to get on the network... so I transfer over bluetooth. It truly is my best option at work.

So sick of people thinking that just because they don't use something, it means it's completely worthless to everyone.

Yeah it's like people saying that something is invaluable to everyone just because they use it.
 

Artdeco

Platinum Member
Mar 14, 2015
2,682
1
0
I don't think you can call the iPhone a status symbol given how prevelant they are. The iPhone is the best selling smartphone on the market after all.

Add in a MacBook and an Apple Watch, and you have a status symbol...
 

sweenish

Diamond Member
May 21, 2013
3,656
60
91
People think eating at the Olive Garden is a status symbol.

Prevalence has never had anything to do with it.
 

nOOky

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2004
3,299
2,374
136
Speaking for myself and my wife and a few people I know, now that we will be buying our phones full price and not getting them subsidized, there won't be a new iPhone in our future when we can get a comparable Android phone for half the money.

I'm somewhat of an average user. I just want email, a great camera, and common apps on my phone along with great battery life. I just paid $425 for an LG G4 for the wife, a comparable iPhone is almost double that. Plus we use the same chargers and connectors etc. it's a no-brainer, to me anyway. But it's always good to have choices.

Another consideration was removable battery and memory card. We will be traveling and in remote places, and being able to carry a spare battery or two is nice.
 

JujuFish

Lifer
Feb 3, 2005
11,464
1,062
136
I buy Android because I like the interface a lot better than iOS. I also dislike the proprietary nature of pretty much all things Apple. That won't stop me from recommending Apple to someone; it's just not for me.
 

QueBert

Lifer
Jan 6, 2002
23,040
1,212
126
IPhones don't even come close to customization options that are provided by android. Period.

Cydia > XDA, and it's not even close. Now stock iOS vs Android, you're 100% correct. XDA as a whole might be bigger than Cydia by a small amount, but that's totally negated by it having totally different sections for every different Android phone. I can get more tweaks and hacks for my iP6+ than any single Android handset supported on XDA, probably any 20.
 
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ControlD

Diamond Member
Apr 25, 2005
5,440
44
91
Cydia > all of XDA, and it's not even close. Now stock iOS vs Android, you're 100% correct.

I disagree with that and I use both. Maybe it depends on what you are looking to accomplish though. I find the whole jailbreaking process much more tedious as well.
 

QueBert

Lifer
Jan 6, 2002
23,040
1,212
126
I disagree with that and I use both. Maybe it depends on what you are looking to accomplish though. I find the whole jailbreaking process much more tedious as well.

I could spend 4 days browsing thru Cydia repos and still not even have seen half of the tweaks and mods they have to offer. Stock iOS yes you can't do much, but once JB there's not much you can't do. JB'ing 8.x was as simple as plugging in the phone and running a file. Older iOS was a bit more complex with you having to put it into DFU mode, but that hasn't been a requirement for years. IMHO iOS + Activator is about as perfect as it can get, if Activator ends up supporting iOS 9 (once JB'ed) and has 3D Touch support, I'll probably die.
 
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Crono

Lifer
Aug 8, 2001
23,720
1,503
136
If you can afford an iPhone, you can probably afford an inexpensive mid-range Android phone to play around with and find out why. If you are unwilling to do so, then you probably aren't really open to the arguments, you likely just want to bash Android. Almost everyone who puts a little effort into using multiple platforms today can easily identify the strengths and weaknesses of each of them.
 
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ControlD

Diamond Member
Apr 25, 2005
5,440
44
91
I could spend 4 days browsing thru Cydia repos and still not even have seen half of the tweaks and mods they have to offer. Stock iOS yes you can't do much, but once JB there's not much you can't do. JB'ing 8.x was as simple as plugging in the phone and running a file. Older iOS was a bit more complex with you having to put it into DFU mode, but that hasn't been a requirement for years. IMHO iOS + Activator is about as perfect as it can get, if Activator ends up supporting iOS 9 (once JB'ed) and has 3D Touch support, I'll probably die.

Yeah, Activator is awesome I agree.
 
Feb 25, 2011
16,996
1,625
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Boy the fanboys from both camps out in force in this topic.
Pretty much.

Newsflash, nerds - 98% of people just buy the pretty-looking one, or the one with the most megakilobitbytes or whatever. They use it to make phone calls, text, tweet, use the default web browser, and install a couple of F2P games. That's it.