Phone Market Share
The Android has continuously grown and taken up global market share. From less than 37% during 2011, to over 81% on 2016, the Android has increased its market share steadily. With a wider choice of hardware, to cheaper options and headphone jacks. The Android phone comes with a lot of benefits. However, in the United States, the growth of Android users has been stagnant at approximately 50%, and iPhone users have been steadily increasing since 2012. iPhone had a market share of less than 30% during 2012, to over 45% on 2018. What has impacted the people and their choice of smartphones?
A cascade of people chose the iPhone over Blackberry and Microsoft phones. People felt peer pressure from others to switch to the iPhone for the blue iMessage. With already a small market share of 20% total, Microsoft and Blackberry could not resist the temptations from the iPhone users; the benefits of switching outweighed the costs. However, the iPhone users could not pass the threshold level of the cascade for the Android users. With a firm grasp of 50% market share, the android users could not see any additional benefit to switch to the iPhone. Although some people might have criticized them for having green texts, but the Android users had peer support from the 50% of people that also used android. For them, there was no reason to switch to the iPhone, as more people use the android anyway.
With the iPhone still creeping on them, no one knows what might trigger another cascade. Maybe the Android will start having yellow texts that attracts people to their product, pushing the users over the tipping point and starting a cascade. Maybe the iPhone becomes cheaper, and competes against the Android and initiates the cascade. The next move is to be determined, but currently we are at a standoff of market share, and the next move might be a pivotal one.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held-by-smartphone-platforms-in-the-united-states/