this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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Why are iPhones so popular in the US compared to Europe? Is it a peer pressure kind of thing? Or simply status? The difference seems to be pretty substantial and I don't think it can be explained by user experience alone.
iPhones have a 58% (US) vs 26% (EU) market share.
I think it has to do with the messagin app. For some reason in the us it's still common to use plain sms messages, which on an iPhone get translated to the blue bubble, but when sent to an android become the infamous green bubble.
This is however not the case in the EU bc sms messages were still expensive enoughfuring that time that when whatsapp released, everyone did the switch so as to not to pay the sms fees, and now, even if sms are basically free, everyone uses whatsapp as the default messaging app.
And as we know on whatsapp there's no differentiation of anything regarding the device you are sending messages to, so no constant reminder of "this guy had an android".
Just my 2 cents on why this could be.
The interesting thing is that the green/blue bubble thing is only infamous in the US.
As you say, outside the US, people use messaging apps like whatsapp or wechat.
off topic, by any chance are you using Jerboa? ses like your comments is missing some spaces and I suspect it might be a bug with the app
It is a bug with Jerboa, it don't play nice with autocomplete / autocorrect underlines.
Yes! Wow it has to do with the app? I was going crazy, yes when I delete a word it shifts back and joind with the last word, it drives me nuts, are they planning on fixing it? Or do you recommend me another app?
While other commenters are correct about the marketing in some aspects. As a parent of teenagers I will say if they don't have an iPhone they will be mocked relentlessly. The whole bubble color thing is real. They think androids are for poor people even though androids have a much larger range of price. This isn't a "my kids" thing. This is a "everyone in school thinks" thing.
God help me when they get their next upgrade and suddenly my chargers start going missing because "someone stole" theirs...
So it boils down to classism among youths and in schools?
adults participate in it
No, no, blame the children.
We, the current adults, are not at fault for the situation. It's others. Older adults, or the young people. It's only us who is enlightened, everyone else is fucking stupid.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying, because I was agreeing with you.
this is the same excuse i hear for people circumcising their kids.
are us people so weak to peer pressure?
Apple is headquartered in America and used a lot of marketing with celebrities, musicians, trendsetters etc.
Samsung is really popular in Asia. There's something to be said for homefield advantage.
What's the carrier situation like in the EU? Do they market the iPhone aggressively in Europe? I'd suspect both of those may have some influence on the difference, but I'm as interested as you in what's affecting the differences in adoption between both regions.
Heavy marketing in europe
RCS has failed to take over the market, creating a strong preference for iMessage. Additionally, iPhones just work. The curated App Store means far less malware and buggy crap apps. Pile on the social aspects and few people under 25 are going for iPhones.
You sound like every cringe teenager worried about the status of blue or green messages. Cringe bro. Just absolutely cringe.
I don't know what RCS even is.
We all just use Whatsapp here, both on iPhone and Android. If you bought an iPhone for some reason and tried to text people through iMessage you'd get laughed out of the room.
Also, holy crap, how long has it been since you looked at the Play Store? Is that narrative about Android still running in the US? I legitimately hadn't heard that one in years.
It's gotten better over the years, but the stats don't lie. Play Store has higher incidence of shady apps or outright malware. Some of this is due to their policies, some of it because of how Android apps work. And I work in information security, so I'm quite familiar with the state of things. RCS was proposed as a replacement for SMS, to correct some deficiencies and modernize it overall. In the US, it ended up getting fragmented due to carrier differences and Google tacking on patents and licensing encumbrances that harmed adoption. In the EU yeah, everyone just uses 3rd party platforms, so it's not a problem there.
The ecosystem is very different and there's definitely a more open platform on Google's side still, but the perception that Play is catching up to the iPhone App Store has not been a thing around here for ages. I mean, discovery is borked across the board on both at this point, and breaking out with new content through placement is a nonstarter.
And hell no, nobody uses "third party platforms". They use the Play Store. Nobody is in Samsung or Amazon's weirdo alternatives. Those are not a thing, except for the five apps Samsung insists on making you update that way for some reason. It's Play or nothing. If you're developing phone apps and you're not on the Play Store you're dead. I haven't spoken to a mobile developer that was targeting anything but the App Story and the Play Store... ever.
I thought I knew how that worked in the US, but maybe you're talking about something different here.
3rd party platforms as in messaging services, not apps stores.
Ah, got it. I thought you were still talking about the Play Store there. It's telling that I didn't even categorize Whatsapp that way instinctively, though.
I think maybe because I also don't think of SMS as a "first party" thing, since it's a pre-existing standard, not an Apple or Google thing at all. In my mind SMS is a public service thing, like AM radio, and messaging is a completely different application.
It probably shows how successfully Apple appropriated it in the US, which I admit I keep forgetting.
A natural consequence of more flexibility and openness is the potential for abuse. That's not a bad thing mind you. Imagine if Android was as locked down as iOS, it'd be horrible for everyone. As for which is better, eh, opinions and preferences. If the world's largest search provider could fix the searchability (lol) of their app store it would be great. Apple has a similar issue. If you're in their App Spotlight you've going to see huge amounts of traffic to your app, but for everyone else it's chopped liver. On the topic of third party, I wonder if more repos in the style of F-Droid would help. Apple is getting force fed third-party apps next year in the EU, and I'm looking forward to the benefits.
Yeah, for sure. I was thinking less of the existence of abuse and more on the narrative of abuse. Apple had some success early on presenting itself as the only place to do serious business on mobile development because the Android alternative was a wild west of malware where you couldn't monetize or discover at all.
That narrative faded and now the perception of Android is probably closer to Windows on PC than to old Android. Yes, you can run wild, but by and large the commercial ecosystem is safe, secure and as business-friendly as the postapocalyptic tardocapitalist wasteland of mobile development gets these days, I suppose.
I am very curious to see what happens with sideloading on Apple, too. I'm guessing as little as possible, if Apple can get away with it.
but no revanced
That doesn't explain the difference in market share. Seems like there are cultural differences.
It might be, and given the States' rather unique culture I have a feeling it's a big contributor other factors notwithstanding.
just like any android phone...