

Mobile Market Share Not Equivalent to Usage Share - tapan_pandita
http://www.tenfingercrunch.com/article/196/2012/11/26/mobile_market_share_not_equivalent_to_usage_share/

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calciphus
I can think of a number of ways to interpret this data that don't support your
conclusions:

1) Online device utilization is a lagging indicator, since the traffic data is
representative of the smartphone market share numbers from about 2 years ago.
This is consistent with observations that smartphone device use increases over
the ownership period.

2) iOS users are engaging in more casual discovery on their devices, and as
such hitting more of the reporting sites in these statistics.

3) iOS better serves data-hungry users, either through device selection,
plans, legacy, or some other factor.

4) iOS is worse at managing data use, on-device cache, etc.

5) The "unique methodology for collecting this data" employed by
NetMarketShare, which is without detailed explanation or put to scientific
rigor could be misrepresenting this data.

Any one of these could explain or contribute to a considerable amount of
inaccurate data. A combination of them could exacerbate these effects. So
unless you're arguing that people are buying Android devices and throwing them
in the trash, the number of bits pulled down by devices isn't a terribly
useful indicator of market penetration, just user behavior.

If you want to know what platform to target for a particular service (assuming
you can only target one), mass-analysis is pretty lousy. Get to know your
target market and what devices they use.

Unfortunately, this looks like the kind of "analysis" that starts with a
belief and sets out to find data to support it.

~~~
mouth
Thank you for your opinion. The reason behind this analysis was to examine why
sales figures and usage figures amongst the two leading platforms did not
match up. Not everything is a conspiracy. I am not a mobile developer, just an
analyst (not in the tech industry) who enjoys crunching numbers on my own
time. I thought I would share it to spark conversation, and I am happy to see
it has. Not everyone has an agenda.

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bunderbunder
Plays into some speculation I made last month:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4734153>

Long story short: I think it may be inaccurate to think of the Android space
as strictly a subset of the smartphone space. It seems instead that they're
two (perhaps only slightly) overlapping sets.

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tapan_pandita
There is actually a flaw in the stats used to prove this. For market share
comparisons, only phones have been used. For internet usage comparison, the
all iOS devices have been used. For a fair argument, the tablet market share
should be compared as well. Also, a person is much more likely to browse and
consume on a tablet than on a phone.

~~~
mouth
This issue has been corrected and tablets are now included in Device Sales
figures. Thanks!

