Android's 'weak gravity' means users drift away to iPhone, study finds

"Weak gravity" might sound like something from the Oscar-nominated film - but instead it's a paradox that a UK company says it has identified in Android smartphones.

Specifically, "weak gravity" means that although first-time smartphone buyers in the UK are far more likely to buy an Android phone than Apple's iPhone, and more likely to stay with it than iPhone users are, Apple pulls more users into its orbit on successive purchases than it loses, increasing its share of total users.

The "pull" is so strong that although 65% of first-time smartphone owners buy an Android phone, compared to 19% for iPhones, by the time they are on their third phone the ownership ratios are 49% for Android and 37% for the iPhone.

The data emerges from a study carried out in September 2013 (PDF) of 450 British owners of smartphones carried out for Foolproof, a London-based user experience company. Though the number sampled might seem small, it was carried out by a professional survey panel company with respondents around the UK, and is large enough to be statistically representative of the UK population of smartphone owners, said Philip Morton, Foolproof's principal consultant.

"We started out looking into what's called the 'Android engagement paradox' - the fact that although Android phones are more widely used, they don't show up as much in web usage statistics," Morton told the Guardian.

But in surveying the panels of smartphone owners - with 150 each on their first, second and third smartphone - they discovered a different paradox: a tendency for Android users to gravitate towards an iPhone, despite higher average loyalty to Google's platform.

Broad agreement

The findings broadly agree with surveys in the US carried out by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), which interviewed 500 buyers of smartphones between April and June 2013. That found that Android had the largest share of buyers - but that iPhones had the better retention, with 78% of those who activated a new phone staying with Apple's offering, while only 67% of Android buyers remained with it. A study at the same time by the consultancy group Yankee Group said that Android was a "leaky bucket" in the US, and forecast that the total number of iPhone users will pass Android users during 2014.

The Foolproof survey found that among first-time smartphone owners with an Android device, 59% intended to get another Android phone. For second-time owners, it was 56%; for third-timers, 54%.

By contrast, with iPhone owners the "intention to renew" started lower - at 47% for first-time owners - and then rose to 50% on the second and 54% on the third, the same as for Android.

Overall, it found a general trend towards iPhone ownership, with loyalty growing on each successive purchase, against falling loyalty towards Android.

This meant Android lost share over time because its higher total number of users created a larger number of switchers to iPhone use. The smaller number of iPhone users, by contrast, meant smaller numbers of switchers. The iPhone was also better than Android at attracting former BlackBerry users.

Separate data from ComScore suggests that in November 2013 there were 35.3m smartphone users in the UK, and about 14.2m featurephone users. Of those about 18.3m were Android users, and 10.3m iPhone users. BlackBerry users made up 3.3m, Windows Phone owners 2.1m, and Nokia Symbian users 1m.

The rapid growth in smartphone adoption of the past two years has now begun to slow, with a growing number of people considering upgrades. Data from the research company Mediacells says that 9.7m UK owners will upgrade their smartphone in 2014, compared to 8m who will get their first one.

However the data offered some encouragement for BlackBerry, where its share remained steady among second- and third-time buyers.

Morton thinks that the shift from Android to iPhone could be due to evolving needs as people get used to smartphones. "The proportion of Android owners gets smaller as we looked at people who were on their second or third smartphone," he said. "We think it's because what you could call the 'job to be done' by the phones changes - the role that people have in their lives for these phones.

"If you're a featurephone user who is coming to replace your phone, then you just want it to do calls and texts - so pricing is going to be important, and other things like the camera quality or apps won't be a big concern. But as people use their first smartphone and get more experience with it, over time the role that the phone plays in their lives influences their next buying decision. The results that you see here is that people want to choose the best smartphone for their needs."

He thinks that "there is a block of stuff that attracts people to the Android platform in the first place, but these get less strong over time. Price is the key thing, but this becomes less important as the phone has more value in their lives. We had a theory that this might come out, but we were shocked by how clear the trend was. We thought it would be messier."

FIGURE TRENDS

But Ben Wood, principal analyst at the research firm CCS Insight, was initially sceptical about the survey findings. "In the US I would totally expect this, because that's an iPhone fortress - for most consumers that's the phone of choice there. And Android plays well to first-time buyers. But I wonder if this will be true into the future. From talking to retailers [in the UK] it feels like other smartphones [than the iPhone] are starting to get a little bit of traction. Yes, iPhone users are very engaged - but Android is becoming more attractive at the higher end. The 'app gap' [between offerings on the iPhone and Android] has closed dramatically. That has made people resist switching. If Apple wants to continue to take advantage of the trend in future, it will have to have something special with the iPhone 6, whenever it lands."

Foolproof's survey didn't look into differences in loyalty between owners of cheaper and more expensive Android phones.

CIRP's survey in the US found that Samsung had the highest retention rate among Android manufacturers, at 52%, compared to 27% for HTC, 18% for LG and 9% for Google subsidiary Motorola.

The Foolproof study asked a single group of people at the same time about their smartphone use, rather than tracking a single cohort through successive purchases.