Apple

It’s funny how green bubbles and iMessage get all the blame for the result of Apple having literally created a better product.

In europe iMessage is a very small minority. I personally detest whatsapp messenger, but that's what everyone uses unless you don't want to talk to people.

I'll never forget a few months ago on Reddit I saw a dude comment the only reason so many teenagers have iPhones is because they usually don't pay for it themselves, and they're gonna switch to Android when they get older.

This is nothing new, this trend has been reported already for the past couple of years. Kids aren't stupid, they want something that works and is as fast as they are.

iOS is just cleaner and cooler for the most part. Android suffers with the kids these days from them not feeling as premium due to the myriad of cheap phones on the market

It’s not about value or functionality for young people it’s about what’s cool and what isn’t

Samsung got the right idea changing things up with the folding phones. That’s something that is cool and might eventually persuade kids if they can come down in price a little

It’s not just iMessage but the Apple Ecosystem compared to Android.

There’s one thing that Google also needs that Apple is dominating, and that is physical stores.

I love Apple Stores. You go inside, play around, get your phone fixed, and learn more about the stuff you have or want to own. It’s exclusively Apple, and they’re found inside malls, remote locations, and are tourist attractions. You have workers there who are deep in the product knowledge and can make recommendations based on your needs.

As a teenager, my buddies and I loved this. It was a place that we would always have to stop by when we went to the mall to window shop.

You want to buy the Google Pixel? You have to go to the carrier store, that’s unless you have any of the main carriers. If you want to buy unlocked then your only real choice is online or Best Buy. The problem to that is that those both have different phone options so it’s no longer comparisons between the products GOOGLE sell, it’s comparisons between Samsung, OnePlus, Apple, etc.

Samsung also has some stores, but it’s dull in comparison to Apple, unless you’re in let’s say South Korea.

None of the kids that my daughter hangs out with have android phones and none of them talk about wanting any of the android phones that are available. It’s not even part of their vocabulary and some of them are very interested in tech but it’s all iPhones iPads, and Apple watches.

always has been and it's not the states, it's everywhere. ios is more oriented on the ux that evolved with the time.

android is more tech oriented and ios is more human oriented as experience goes

3 weeks ago, i got a base Galaxy S23 128gb for the same price that Iphone 11 128gb is sold brand new(around 500euro), as an ex iphone 11 user that wanted something new. Even iphone 12 128 was more expensive than S23.

I wanted to go at least iphone 15 due to typeC(even though 60hz screen sucks), but it was almost double the price. Even iphone 13 was like 250 more expensive. Yes the iphone prices in Europe are crazy expensive.

Thats my main issue with Apple. Their cheaper options are really bad/awful, especially in Europe.

Their devices, even older models are crazy expensive, including the repairs.

And the last part is something most teenagers dont think about a lot(until they brake it, then they notice how expensive they are).

Not my problem

I was using Android phones for a long time. Back then they were half the price of iPhones with comparable if not better specs. They were not as reliable as iPhones, but it didn’t matter since they were cheap. Then starting with Pixel they started raising the price to match iPhone. I reluctantly stuck with them for a few more years because they had better cameras and offered free cloud storage. Then they stopped offering free cloud storage, the reliability issues never went away and iPhones cameras got better. Why would I spend the same amount of money on a phone that’s not as reliable and doesn’t offer any advantages?

You guys can blame Snapchat and Instagram for this. Using the android version of these apps is a terrible experience. The camera quality is noticeably worse because the apps just screenshot the viewfinder instead of working directly with the hardware(something iPhones don’t have an issue with). I can go through my stories and 9/10 I can clearly see who uses an android unless they upload their pics externally first. For teenagers this is a big deal.

iPhones/Androids are a tool, tools are not meant to be “cool”. Tools are meant to be useful, and you use the tool that fits your use case. If Apples/Google/etc tools do not fit the use case, then that is a problem that Apple/Google/etc needs to address.

I think outside of iMessage, Apple just gets the US market, which isn't a surprise I guess because Apple is an American company. The way they advertise their phones and design their features feel like they are all optimized for the US market first. A lot of new features like Apple Card and redesigned Apple Maps always come to US markets while other big markets have to wait a long time before Apple brings them over.

There are other small things like the heavily app-focused design, which favors a lot of different apps that each does one thing and one thing well. This is different from how a lot of emerging markets have superapps (e.g. WeChat) that will dominate your daily life. A quick example: iOS has built-in non-customizable QR code scanning (either as a quick action from Control Center, or automatically from the camera app). This is useful let's say you want to scan a restaurant menu or an URL link. But let's say you live in China, most of the QRs codes you see are usually WeChat / Alipay links that you have to open the specific app and scan the code from there, making a built-in OS feature completely useless.

And of course iMessage itself is also a uniquely N American thing because a lot of other countries moved organically to other apps like WhatsApp, LINE, WeChat and so on.

The iPhones are also priced expensive enough (Apple doesn't do price differentiation across markets) that in a lot of lower income countries they are just too expensive compared to lower-priced Android devices, whereas in US, the general income level is high enough that they are affordable (but still expensive) to a lot of folks.

I do wonder about the specific markets like Japan, since iPhones are also really popular there, and I wonder what Apple is doing specifically right there comparatively? (iPhones are popular everywhere but I feel that in Japan specifically it's even more popular. Maybe because of a lack of good local competition?)

Without exception, the only people I see EXCITED about $1000 Android flagship phones are the 30-50 year old geeky men I work alongside in IT/development.

Virtually everyone else: they either LOVE their iPhone... OR more commonly: they don't give a crap about phones at all... and thus bought a dirt cheap Android or a very old iPhone model, because "low cost" was their number one concern.

FaceTime is also higher with kids these days, they literally hang out on FT for hours.

Apple marketing (and product/design) has consistently trumped Android in this regard, and it has paid off here.

I live in Germany and people in my age started to state that an Android would be a "red flag" or "cringe".😅

I just got gifted an Android Tablet which is my first foray back into Android in about 8 years. Holy hell, using it is like going back to the Stone Age. It’s so infuriating because there are so many things that with iOS are just baked into it that now I have to go out to the Play Store to find something that works.

Weather? Why the hell is there no default weather app? Guess I’ll go research and figure out the best one. Oh, I need a task list? Well shit, there isn’t one of those either. Back to the Play store to look through the thousands of task list apps.

Then most of the options for things you do download on the Play Store are absolutely terrible. I’ve been using this Android Tablet for 3 weeks now and the one thing it has taught me is that I’m not moving away from iOS any time soon.

I think it’s the fans. Most people have iPhones and don’t really TALK about iPhones. Android owners GO OFF about iPhones. It’s cringey behavior and puts people off. You don’t want to be associated with that kind of person, nerdy or dorky or just overtly negative over really nothing *when you’re a teenager, as it’s social suicide. Even Samsung ads give off that vibe. The phones could be the next best thing , but if the owners are douchecanoes and the marketing plays into it then it’s not really going to vibe with the kiddos, no matter how good of a product is out there.