Unique comparison between devices
Apple has long been recognized for high quality design in their elite design program, and have always had stringent criteria for applications that developers submit to the iTunes library, maintaining a feeling of exclusivity to their products. On the other end of the spectrum is Google whose philosophy is based on open source design, allowing for a more iterative and expansive library of apps. For these reasons, there are more free apps available for Android, but there are fewer low quality apps on iTunes that feel like forgotten dorm room projects.
With these differences, what does it actually mean to the end user? Do consumers care? Is there actually a difference between Android and Apple users? We don’t just mean differences in what coffee the tend to drink, or how hipster they tend to be, rather how they react to the apps on their devices? In particular, how does each react when an app crashes?
Who is less forgiving when an app crashes?
According to BugSense.com, which offers big data for mobile apps, when analyzing one billion data points from over 10,000 app developers in October, several trends emerged regarding this behavior, and the company discovered that Android users are far less tolerant of an app crashing.
Roughly one in four Android user will remove a free app immediately upon crashing, whereas only one in 10 iOS users remove an app after it crashes. When it comes to paid apps, iOS users are the less forgiving, with 45 percent removing a paid app after it crashes, compared to 42 percent of Android users. The disparity between paid and free is also intriguing, as both are more tolerant of a free app crashing.
Additionally, iOS users are quite serious about their games, with 69 percent removing a game after it crashes, while only 42 percent of Android users remove the app after a crash. Every day apps like weather apps, photo apps, task apps, and the like are removed after a crash by 54 percent of Android users, while only 46 percent of iOS users will remove them in the event of a crash.
So, who is more loyal?
Comparing the loyalty of each device user is difficult, because what the data truly shows is that each is tolerant of different types of apps crashing, which unveils more about the general reasons for use than loyalty. Android users get frustrated and jump ship when standard apps (weather, photos) crash, and with more free apps, they are more likely to have experimented with free apps than iOS users, thus the lower tolerance for free apps crashing. Alternatively, iOS users are far less tolerant of paid apps crashing, and take their gaming more seriously, which reveals that there are likely higher quality games available or Apple, hence the volume.
Just as our nation is split fairly evenly between red and blue, we are split between iOS and Android just the same, and behavior and tolerance levels of each side varies because the intention of using the device is varied as well.
