Most of the “iPhone vs. Android” arguments that take plan online are between hardcore fanboys who wouldn’t dream of switching from one platform to the other. In fact, many of it make it their mission to try to convince other people that their mobile platform of choice is better than the rival platform, and they think everyone should switch. It’s as though the smartphone that someone else uses has any impact whatsoever on their lives, so they need everyone to agree with them. We stopped trying to understand them a long time ago, so now we just ignore them.
In the real world, people switch from iOS to Android and from Android to iOS all the time. There are a wide range of reasons, of course, and people often wonder what the most common reasons might be. Now, a new survey looks to shed light on the subject.
News and reviews site PCMag conducted a survey earlier this month that asked respondents to answer a simple question: why did you switch from one mobile platform to the other. 2,500 consumers based in the United States responded to the survey over the course of three days. The results are pretty interesting, though not entirely surprising.
Options for answers to the survey question included better user experience, better features, better price, more apps, better customer service, faster software updates, and other. Most of the answers were pretty even on both sides of the fence, but there are two answers that had fairly large disparities.
Among users who switched from iOS to Android, 29% said they did so in search of products that cost less money, 18% higher than respondents who switched from Android to iOS. This, of course, is hardly a surprise. Apple is a hardware company first and foremost, and it makes the majority of its profit selling expensive iPhones. No other smartphone maker on the planet enjoys smartphone average selling prices (ASP) anywhere close to the iPhone.
The other big disparity was in the “better user experience” category. 47% of the people who switched from Android to iOS gave this answer, compared to only 30% among people who switched from iOS to Android. Again, that’s not much of a surprise considering the quality of Apple’s iOS UX.
