6 ways iPhone and Android users differ
What smartphone click rates tell use about the people who own them
Android users are mostly guys. iPod touch owners are overwhelmingly young. And people who carry iPhones are way more likely to lust after an iPad.
Those are a few of differences that emerged from a opt-in survey of 963 smartphone and iPod touch owners conducted in February by AdMob, the mobile advertising company that Google snapped up in November for $750 million.
In a report issued Thursday morning, AdMob highlights six differences between owners of devices running Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone OS, Google’s (GOOG) Android OS and Palm’s (PALM) WebOS, each nicely illustrated with a color-coded bar chart. See below.
1. Guys and Droids. Maybe it’s the appeal of open source; maybe it was the whiff of homophobia in those Motorola Droid ads. For whatever reason, 73% of Android users are male, compared with 58% of webOS users, 57% of iPhone users and 54% iPod touch users.
Source: AdMob
2. Kids with iPods. The iPod touch is a hit with the student crowd, which make sense given that Apple hands them out for free with the purchase of a Mac in its back-to-school promos. Based on the survey, 78% of iPod touch users are younger than 25, compared with 25% of iPhone users and 24% of Android and webOS users.
Source: AdMob
3. Bring on the apps. iPod touch users love their applications — especially the free ones. They download an average of 12 apps a month, 37% more apps than iPhone and Android users. They also spend a lot more time using them: 100 minutes a day, 25% more time than iPhone and Android users.
Source: AdMob
4. Paying the piper. When it comes to paid apps, iPhone users lead the pack. Half of them buy at least one paid app a month, compared with 21% of Android users, 24% of webOS users and 35% of iPod touch users.
Source: AdMob
5. Happy campers. Smartphone owners tend to favor their own brand, but some favor it more than others. 91% of iPhone users and 88% of iPod touch users would recommend their device, compared with 84% of Android users and 69% of webOS users. webOS users are nearly three and a half times more likely to not recommend their device than iPhone OS users.
Source: AdMob
6. Kindle vs. iPad. Steve Jobs may have been on to something when suggested last month that there was a ready market for the iPad in the 75 million people who already own iPhones or iPod touches. In the AdMob survey, 16% of iPhone users said they intend to purchase an iPad, compared with 11% of webOS users and only 6% of Android users. Nearly as many Android owners favored — or perhaps they already owned — Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle.
Source: AdMob
AdMob bills itself as the world’s largest mobile ad network, serving banner and text ads for more than 15,000 mobile sites and apps and gathering data from every ad request, impression and click. This survey was conducted from Feb. 5 to 16 among 963 users — 318 Android, 244 iPhone, 356 iPod touch and 45 webOS. The press release is available here and the pdf here, labeled (inexplicably) as the Jan. 2010 report. Results from a similar survey conducted six months earlier are available here.
Posted on February 26, 2010, in culture, technology, USA and tagged AdMob, Android, Apple, Google, iPhone, iPod touch, Palm, WebOS. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
sometimes right - sometimes not - always correct 
Interesting comments, what struck me was the comments about kids using iPhones (I know I sound like, “won’t somebody please think of the children?), but that is what concerns me. Look, iPhones are the cool, hip thing now, but like Facebook it’s shaping how people not only use technology, but defining _how_ they can use it. When I was a kid I was lucky enough to get an Apple //e (came out as an update to the venerable ][+) and I was free to roam and explore on my own. I spent time learning programming, word processing (Apple’s word processor back then worked very much like vim does for me today!) and of course playing games. I could boot off a floppy, or from my DOS 3.3 disk and get a prompt to start typing on. Fast forward many years, and I had that same feeling again when I started learning Linux, I could do anything, go anywhere, virtually speaking. With the iPhone you can only do so much, apps have to have approval from high up, and if you ‘jailbreak’ it that will go away when you *have* to update to the latest version of the iPhone software. I honestly worry that this kind of “group corralling” (just came up with that) is shaping what people think they can do, and I think that blocks the freedom and creativity you should have.
In my world if you buy something, it’s yours – do whatever you want with it. Rip it apart, pull wires out, stand on it, hold all the buttons down for 5mins, what happens? Time will tell if Android is the answer to this desire, but it’s at least leading the good fight, freedom for freedom’s sake – not this ‘freedom in a cage’ feeling you get when you have to ‘ok’ a EULA before you do anything.
OK, may be losing cool points here, but…
I love my iPHONE. It allows me the freedom to do what I want/need to do where ever I am or happen to be going (assuming there is cell service or WiFi). I really think it is one of the most amazing things that has come along in my life…that I actually have access to and can use. There are other COOLER more influential things that have come along in my lifetime like electron super colliders and non-allergenic pets, but I dont have access to them. SO, the iPhone wins by default if not on points alone.
I do agree that they control the accessibility to a almost ridiculous degree and the “group corralling” is a slippery slope of acknowledged control (agreeing to let Apple tell me what to do) vs. forced control(Apple not letting me do what i want to). There has to be a subconscious balance agreed to in someone’s head when they buy/use/understand the iPhone.
Then again…they don’t have to buy it or the Andriod at all.
Come to think of it, A netbook can do the same things with some sort of VIOP software.
There is the solution! Netbooks for everyone…
Pres. Obama!!! I DEMAND NETBOOKS FOR ALL AMERICANS AND NATIONWIDE WiFi (with no school officials watching me use it).