Remember when Apple boasted about having the most loyal users in the mobile universe with an advantage? Well, at least if the metric is based on users from the United States, this idea will have to be rethought.
A survey (PDF) released yesterday by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) shows that, over the past 12 months and considering the universe of smartphone users in the USA, the loyalty rate among Android fans was higher than iOS, albeit narrowly: 92% against 89%. Incidentally, not only that: it has been constantly bigger over the past three years, always with a small margin.
The loyalty rate measures the proportion of users who have activated a new device over the past year; if that device is on the same platform as the user previously had, it is considered a loyal user.
It is more interesting than that to note that the loyalty rate on both platforms has remained basically stable over the past three years, always revolving around 90%, that is, for Apple and Google, the prospect of gaining new users from the “other increasingly narrow side; instead, the smarter strategy will continue to improve their ecosystems to please and retain the users they already have and capture new customers, who have not yet chosen a side.
As CIRP analyst John Lowitz said:
Over time, we have seen analysts predicting that the switch from operating systems, particularly from Android to iOS, is expected to grow in the future. This is entirely possible, but it would be a long-term change. These analyzes are based on what consumers plan to do, which, we know, is highly subjective and, in most cases, more aspirational than realistic. The CIRP loyalty analysis is based on what consumers have actually done in recent periods.
Interestingly, we recently commented on a “planning survey” and Apple did very well with it, unlike this CIRP survey which, as Lowitz commented, takes into account who really changed.
Would the search have similar results here in our beloved republic?
via 9to5Mac
