
Why Android users surf less than iPhone users - hisyam
http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2012/12/why_android_use.html
======
danielrm26
iOS user here, so bias acknowledged, but I am a mobile security guy and I get
new phones quite often.

Just last week I fired up the new Google Nexus device from LG and tried to
spend a full week on it--for the purpose of being more familiar with Android
as a user.

I couldn't make it a full 24 hours.

This was a fully stock Android experience, on the latest and greatest phone,
and Chrome crashed six (6) times on me. Scrolling in the browser was markedly
inferior. And the overall experience of reading on the device just felt far
worse.

I didn't want to read anything on it, honestly. I tried to account for my own
bias towards iPhone/iOS, but I don't think it makes up even half of the bad
experience I had.

In short, I think Android phones discourage, from a UX standpoint, the
activity of browsing. And I think that's a much larger factor than that
mentioned in the original post.

~~~
cheald
The scrolling difference is due to differences in how Android and iOS
prioritize things. On iOS, putting your finger on the screen stops _all_
processing on the page - no rendering, no animation, no Javascript, no
downloading, nothing runs until you lift your finger off the screen. This lets
the system devote 100% of its processing power to moving that rendered graphic
around.

Android, by comparison, continues to perform its tasks while you scroll. This
means that the scrolling can be jerkier if things are loading, but you
continue to get a full interactive page while you're scrolling.

Speaking as a developer, iOS(/mobile Safari) gives me fits. It's the mobile
generation's IE6.

~~~
danielrm26
Well, given that a tiny fraction of users are developers, doesn't it seem like
a poor decision on Google's part to have a poor user experience in order to
help in some other area?

Seems like UX should in fact be the highest priority.

~~~
cheald
The way that iOS does things prevents developers from doing things to help UX!
For example, as an effect of this prioritization, iOS doesn't report scroll
position while you're scrolling a page or scrollable div in a page, until the
scroll has completed, and the scroll momentum has come to a full stop. This
makes all sorts of app-like interactions impossible in an iOS webapp.

I don't really think that the user experience is poor, per se. I think it's a
matter of acclimation; I've been using Android since the Nexus One, and while
it was certainly frustrating in the past, Android 4.1 really stepped things
up, and it's a really nice experience now. I appreciate how iOS scrolling
feels, but in general, Android's way of doing things seems to be a lot nicer
to me. I actively use Android and iOS devices on a daily basis (my phone is an
LG Nexus 4, the same one you disliked), and Android feels much, much better to
me than iOS does, with the sole exception of scrolling smoothness.

It's worth noting that there is one difference that might have been annoying
you; iOS starts scrolling as soon as you start moving your finger. Android has
a deadzone of a few pixels, so it might feel less responsive if you're used to
the lack of deadzone on iOS. Once you're used to it, it's not an issue.

------
drcube
This is ridiculous, if I'm reading it right.

For one thing, the carrier I currently use (AT&T), forces you to buy a data
plan if you have a smartphone. I'd be surprised if this wasn't the case for
all carriers. So that blows the conclusion out of the water.

But why ask the question in the first place? Because the Android browser
market share is so much lower than the Android market share as a whole? I
would presume that "browser share" comes from the web, which can be accessed
by all sorts of devices, and "mobile market share" comes just from mobile
devices. That alone probably makes the question moot. But even if it didn't,
there's Opera, Firefox, Chrome and all sorts of other browsers on Android that
could make up the gap.

In other words, I doubt the premise (Android users surf the web less) as well
as the conclusion (this is due to most Android users being too price averse to
use data). I just don't see any evidence of either.

~~~
thoughtsimple
I have a data plan on an iPhone with AT&T and I pay an additional $15 over the
standard 450 minute plan for 200 MB of data. I understand that AT&T has raised
this minimum to $20 for 300 MB.

That price won't break the bank for most people but 200-300 MB for a month of
data isn't much. I'm generally on WiFi so I don't care but I suspect that many
people would find this too small for comfort. If they don't care about surfing
from the phone, I can see people just avoiding using any data at all so that
they don't have to worry about additional fees.

~~~
re_todd
I'm with AT&T and went to the $15/month a couple years ago (don't know if the
price went up, I'm on someone else's contract and I've never actually seen the
bill). It's a pain to worry about bandwidth, and video is out of the question.
Yes, WiFi bandwidth is free, but sometimes I forget to turn on WiFi, then
almost have a heart attack when I see how much bandwidth I've consumed (thanks
to the "3G Watchdog" app). It's just significantly less stressful to put the
android phone down on my desk and just surf on my desktop or laptop on my
Cable connection.

------
micheljansen
The average Android user may surf less than the average iPhone user, but there
are also way more of them. There are loads of cheap low-end Android devices
that are able to browse the internet, but the people who buy them are not so
interested in that. Apple doesn't make low-end phones (although they do sell
old models), so it is a much more conscious decision to spend that much money
on a phone. I think that if you take out all the people who went to a store
"just to buy a phone" and just include people who buy high end models like the
Samsung Galaxy, Google Nexus etc. the browser usage picture is not that
different from iPhone users.

~~~
byoung2
_There are loads of cheap low-end Android devices that are able to browse the
internet, but the people who buy them are not so interested in that_

Case in point: my wife and I both have Android phones, so when my mother in
law needed a phone, we got her an Android too. She has not used the internet
once on it, but we installed a few apps to make it easier for her to use (e.g.
one app puts a picture of the last person who called on the home screen). We
also set it up to dial out through Google Voice (total integration is best on
Android, including replacing the dialer). I bet a large portion of Android
users fall into this category.

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ryanhuff
As an Android user, I would guess that the most significant reason why Android
users browse less may have more to do with conserving the battery than
anything else. My experience with Android and the battery life has been
miserable. My Nexus 4 seems better, though.

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RyanZAG
Wait, what? The whole premise is completely and utterly false?

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-
monthly-201112-20121...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-
monthly-201112-201212)

Android: 33% iOS: 23%

That is a major difference in favor of Android. Why write a blog post without
even checking the data?!

~~~
smackfu
iOS still has a clear lead in North America.

~~~
RyanZAG
And Android has a clear lead in China, the biggest market. These stats also
largely mirror the distribution of Android phone purchases. What's your point?

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-
monthly-201212-20130...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-
monthly-201212-201301-map)

Worldwide, Android still leads by 10% in web browsing.

~~~
enraged_camel
As multiple people have pointed out, the reason Android "leads" by 10% in web
browsing (especially in China) is because there are a ridiculous number of
cheap Android phones out there, leading to a larger amount of _total_ traffic
from Android.

To really understand what the OP is talking about, you need to think in terms
of _per capita_ browsing in iOS and Android. In other words, how much web
browsing does your average iOS user do, vs your average Android user? That is
really what matters.

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mtgx
You failed to mention that the iOS Safari market share is the same as
Android's, which makes sense considering they have about equal installed bases
right now (although the Android one is growing much quicker).

------
felipeko
I'm not sure i agree with his reasons, mostly because what the data really
shows is that Android users don't really browse on Wi-Fi [1] (on 3G the
discrepancy - device marketshare vs browsing marketshare - is much lower).

My opinion (with anecdotal evidence) is that Android users just stick with
their PCs when at home (presumably when they have Wi-Fi), whereas iOS users
prefer the small screen, for some reason.

[1] [http://blog.cloudfour.com/explaining-the-ios-and-android-
mob...](http://blog.cloudfour.com/explaining-the-ios-and-android-mobile-
disparity/)

~~~
Tichy
Seriously, they distinguish between mobile browser usage on Wi-Fi vs 3G? That
doesn't make much sense, at least not if you wonder what device you should
optimize for. Perhaps you could conclude that Wi-Fi surfers would tolerate
bigger web sites, though.

------
jack-r-abbit
Android user here. I don't do a lot of surfing on my phone because I would
rather use a larger screen. Using my wife's iPad or my Asus tablet is a little
better but I still prefer to use my laptop when it is handy. So if I am out
and about and really need to access the web, I do it. But when my laptop is
just in the office... I use the laptop.

I don't think the data is complete unless you also include whether or not
these same people even have a computer anymore. Whether it is right or wrong,
we keep being told that the desktop is dead... so maybe iOS users have bought
into that idea more than Android users. If all you own is an iOS device.. you
don't really have much choice of how you surf the web.

------
jarcoal
Android is the default OS, so naturally it picks up a lot of users that don't
want to use all of it's core features. No surprises here.

------
mtgx
Here's the report he's talking about:

[http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2012/12/browser_stat...](http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2012/12/browser_stats_f_5.html)

What does he find so strange about this? The chart counts all phone browser
market shares. And Android's user base is not 5x that of iOS, if that's what
he's implying.

His article makes no sense, because the data he's talking about doesn't match
at all his "conclusions". The 48% number is for _smartphones only_ , meaning
mostly just Android and iOS, as the others are very tiny market share. But
it's not the whole phone market, as the first chart above shows. So he's
mixing both, and concludes that "Android has half of the market, but only 24%
browser share". Ugh, this post is a mess.

Android has half the SMARTPHONE market, but has much less from the PHONE
market. That's why it only has 24%, just like iOS in the PHONE market.

~~~
RyanZAG
Why use old data? Use current data and argue a position from there.

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-
monthly-201112-20121...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-
monthly-201112-201212)

The Q3 data point is just before iOS and Android began to diverge
dramatically.

------
rprasad
I would argue that Android users generally have more important/interesting
things to do than surfing on their phone all day.

~~~
danielrm26
In case you're not trolling, why is it that the business class cabin of most
flights is full of iPhone users? Why is it that most artists, journalists,
photographers, etc. seem to lean heavily towards iOS?

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just asking what group you think it is that
is highly busy/productive, on Android, and doesn't show up in web logs?

