Apple

Old people use androids. Young people use iPhone. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Literally not a problem for anyone but Google, a company.

It's almost like all of the things that the anti-Apple bandwagon complains about are the things that everybody else likes about Apple. Simplicity. Design. Device interconnectivity. Social features that only work with other iPhones.

Call these things "gimmicks," all you want. It's not a gimmick if it works.

Huh??? O_o

Why is this a problem?

This isn’t an apple issue and really doesn’t belong on this sub other than to be pedantic about apple being superior

I’m guessing something like lack of competition for apple may stagnate innovation but in apples case I don’t think they react to external pressures like that anyway.

Fear the green text bubble

I'm sure the list of things that have not been cool with teenagers but somehow carved out a profitable market for themselves is a lot larger than this author thinks it is.

But to play ball with the line of thinking, maybe the whole platform being so hit and miss when it comes to feature set, performance, price, ad infestation, etc has something to do with it. Cable TV isn't cool with teenagers either, probably for much the same reasons.

It also doesn't help that most Android OEMs fall over themselves to follow Apple in a great many ways instead of trying to create their own path.

They would need to completely revamp the branding if they want to market towards younger non-tech interested individuals. Simplify the hardware/software and boost marketing with a cool and luxury focus. I don’t think feature improvement is required for this problem in NA, you need to change the nerdy alternative image people have in their minds when they think Android.

But they basically own the rest of the world so idk if this is even an issue.

https://preview.redd.it/9dwjom6q8k0c1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=87c538870eec6187074dde33a9e5c24f2dc8371d

I keep reading this is “a US issue”. It isn’t and it isn’t just iMessage. In Japan, walk up and down the crowds in the subway and an astounding majority of people have an iPhone. Most people are using Line to message. There’s more to it than blue text bubbles.

My 11 year old has a Samsung s23 because I wasn’t impressed with Apple parental controls. Android works much better with the Bark monitoring service. She will get an iPhone when she turns 16 and I start loosening the reigns a bit. So far no bullying although she has expressed she wants an iPhone, but she knows why I chose android and doesn’t fight me on it. She’s had an iPad forever and I just upgraded her to an Air 5 with cellular, she wants a career in digital art so I want to support her in that to the best of my ability. Her best friend only has an iPad so she can communicate well with them. I’d love for her to have an iPhone but it was just not possible for me to monitor appropriately at her age.

I tried so hard during my teenage years to love Android. The apps crashed a lot and the tablets were so incredibly unreliable. The app experience was fragmented. It’s all just a no-go personally.

It’s not cool with anyone

Young people are social so messages, Instagram video aka facetime rules. I doubt many browse for more than five minutes on a iPhone.

Using iPhone outside of the apps you see how limited it is. Trying to get a video is tough wince upu do t have a file system. I phones are social phone android is a much better operating system but dealing with teenagers who just want to socialize will hurt android.

IPhone is pretty terrible.

Anyone in the US who owns an android and is in high school/college does not have social skills and is usually a weirdo

Android sucks. It feels like a budget, second-rate product. It’s not polished. It’s for nerds who like to customize everything. You open the web browser and it just seems janky. That’s my experience.

It's not cool with me either and I'm several decades removed from being a teenager.

it literally never was... there was never a point where any young person wanted an android over an iphone in any timeline...

iMessage is the reason why apple is such a brand-loyal company and it is why they will never make it cross-platform until some government agency drags them across the finish line kicking and screaming. Love it or hate it (as a longtime iPhone user, I personally think the green/blue bubble discrepancy makes it a bad user experience for both iPhone users AND android), this is the most significant component of apple's walled ecosystem that keeps people from straying away from their garden.

Thanks for posting this. This is a huge problem for Apple.

IMHO, companies do best with competition. An Android was a formidable competitor.

Also, anti-trust issues could become an issue in the future, even though there really isn't a problem.

Same thing happened with Microsoft back in the day. They were the de facto standard, and supposedly had anti-trust issues. But it was just people choosing Microsoft.

Likewise, it is just teenagers choosing Apple.

Android needs to become cool, so Apple has a formidable competitor. Even though Apple is still best overall IMHO.

Not surprising. How many children do you know who use an iPad. I myself offered my child one of the android “children” tablets and while the preloaded games are decent the function of it is terrible. So laggy and it’s a children tablet, I understand, but it was unbearable. My son began playing games on my iPhone and he preferred it. A lot of kids do. These are kids who have used Apple products from a very young age, I can’t imagine them switching. If you grow up with the Apple ecosystem you become accustomed to it. I had iPads and iPhones growing up. My parents owned the first iPhone and everyone after. I tried a Samsung s7edge once as an adult and while the phone was beautiful. It felt laggy compared to Apple. I couldn’t get used to it. After three days I took it back. Yeah the customization was nice but I’ve jail broken iPhones before so I truly don’t care about androids customization. I want a phone that works seamlessly and I want it to work with every tech device I own. But I can’t see these kids switching to android. Most kids I know have iPads or have used iPads bc that’s what their parents have. They grow to teens who use iPhones. I was an iPod kid and I eventually got an iPod touch, then an iPhone and like I said I’ve stepped out once for three days and never again. I’ve decided if I want a flip phone with xyz I will wait until Apple comes out with one.

I think the biggest reason for this is that android is simply very ugly. Emojis look weird, the ui looks cheap on a lot of android phones, animations don’t feel as smooth, sounds are awful, icons don’t look nice, and many android phones have a mediocre design. iOS looks clean, simple and vibrant. Many people prefer things simply because they are more beautiful. And in formal settings, nobody wants to walk around with a phone that has RGB lighting or “50x zoom” printed on a huge camera module.

Android user here. This is a bit of a lost cause for Android simply due to how it works. Apple has built it's presence in the NA as a premium walled garden of a society. If you don't have apple, you aren't cool. Apple products are expensive and only really work well with other apple products. Android is open source and pretty much anyone can make an Android device. Because of this, a large share of Android phones are cheap budget phones that don't give the brand a good image. It isn't seen as premium. It's alarming how many people still think the back of my phone will come off if I drop it or that Androids still take grainy pictures and videos.

Another pain point is presentation. The largest Android presence in the NA is arguably Samsung and they have the largest reputation of selling budget laggy phones despite selling arguably the most robust feature-rich phones in the market with the premium S-Series. Not to mention One UI pales in comparison to IOS UI in terms of fluidity. An old iPhone will feel as fast as a new Samsung.

Another pain point is presentation. The largest Android presence in the NA is arguably Samsung and they have the largest reputation for selling budget laggy phones despite selling arguably the most robust feature-rich phones in the market with the premium S-Series. Not to mention One UI pales in comparison to IOS UI in terms of fluidity. An old iPhone will feel as fast as a new Samsung.do as much but does what you need exceptionally well.

Another option is a rebrand to refresh their presence but idk if the NA is that important for them to make a big change like that. Android has an admittedly "nerdy" aura around the brand.

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Edit: Forgot the most important part. IMessage. It is known that many teens would consider switching if IMessage was available on Android (can't find the report but... trust me). If Google can success into forcing IMessage to be interoperable, we could see some big shifts and the competition we need to innovate.

At this point I don’t think this is just because of iMessage. I think that even if Apple puts iMessage on Android, most won’t switch simply because it’s not an iPhone. iMessage is definitely a big part of it, but iPhone is a lot more than just iMessage. The iOS experience is unmatched in my opinion. Android comes close, and it definitely is more open with sideloading and multitasking, but that stuff is niche. I don’t think there’s really anything that differentiates Android from iOS that matters to the majority of people. It’s just less smooth, less cohesive, you have to wait for updates unless you have a pixel (or you might have a phone that will not get updated ever), the same apps aren’t as good as they are on iOS and they often don’t get features at the same time as iOS, the list goes on. Sure there are phones that have more hardware features but again those clearly don’t matter to the majority of people either since everyone keeps getting iPhones. I don’t like this trend.

It’s the same for teenagers in many countries. That said: by the time they have to buy their own phones, that number is dramatically less.

Google needs to dump the dorky shit, starting with the name “Android”. Just call it the “G”. Then stop naming the OS after sugar, and go with cats. Half the battle right there.

Fragmented os distros across hundreds (thousands?) of devices. Start there first, google.

i have someone with android on my phone plan and every time he asks me for help with his phone it's always something dumb like some app takes control of sms or whatever. i got tired of wasting my time and just tell him to buy an iphone if he doesn't like it

This is a North American problem, but iPhones are great for kids as Apple has probably the best built in parental controls.

I don't see any problems