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About a fifth of Android phone owners plan to switch to an iPhone

Most smartphone buyers tend to stick with the platform they're familiar with. However, new data from Merrill Lynch indicates that a large percentage of top Android brand users now intend to switch to an iPhone in their next purchase.

Analyst Horace Dediu tweeted out a chart of data compiled by Merrill Lynch Global Research on 32,523 smartphone users ranging from Apple, Blackberry, and Google to a series of global Android licensees: HTC, Huawei, Lenovo, LG, Motorola, Oppo, Samsung, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE.

For each maker, the most popular choice among users for their next phone was another model from the same maker. Among iPhone buyers, that figure was 70 percent. For Samsung and Huawei users, 53 and 54 percent respectively planned to stick with their brand. Just 42 percent of Google owners planned to buy another one, while other brand owners expressed even less loyalty.

Apple was the most popular brand among switchers. Of the top five Android brands globally, 15 to 25 percent said they planned to buy an iPhone next. Among HTC buyers, 25 percent said they intended to get an iPhone, nearly as high as the 34 percent who said they'd get another HTC. Only one percent of iPhone buyers indicated interest in buying an HTC.

That asymmetric brand intention played out across other top brands as well. While 19 percent of Samsung owners said they planned to get an iPhone, only 4 percent of iPhone users were looking at Samsung. The most popular alternative brand iPhone users cited was Huawei. But while 5 percent of iPhone buyers said they planned to switch, 15 percent of Huawei owners said they planned to get an iPhone next.

Other top Chinese brands, including Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi, and Lenovo's Motorola each got one or two percentage points of interest among iPhone buyers, while 20 percent of their users planned to switch in the opposite direction.

Blackberry and Google represented very small groups in the survey, with less than 50 users. Only 30 percent of Blackberry owners planned to buy another Blackberry, but 22 percent planned to get an iPhone. And even among Google buyers, a group that has gone out of its way to pay a premium for Android specifically to support Google, five times as many said they planned to replace theirs with an iPhone compared to the 1 percent of iPhone users who said they intended to buy a phone from Google.

These figures are markedly different from numbers released in 2015 by Ericsson, which studied actual activations of new phones on a monthly basis. It concluded that "the majority of smartphone users remain loyal to their operating system," and that in particular, "owners of high-end models were much more likely to select a new model in the same series from the same vendor than users of lower-end models."

It noted at the time that "around 80 percent of Android and iOS users are loyal to their operating system," while a small trickle of net switchers were continually flowing into the iOS installed base. At new product releases, however, that flow increased, with about twice as many outside users switching to iOS than there were iOS users buying other products.

If Merrill Lynch's data is anywhere close to being accurate, it means that the former models of switchers have fundamentally changed, and that use of Android is no longer protected by brand loyalty. One element of the OS loyalty Ericsson described three years ago has clearly changed — it noted that only 20 percent of Windows Phone users were buying another Windows Phone model.

Windows Phone is effectively gone. Yet among Android brands, the intention to switch to iOS has grown dramatically while loyalty to Android has softened. Other things that have changed in the last three years are the collapse of Android tablets and smartwatches, even as iPad has grown in a shrinking market for tablets. At the same time, Apple Watch has become the most popular watch brand globally while Android watches have all but disappeared.

44 Comments

deminsd 8 Years · 143 comments

I wonder if those Android users dreaming of switching to iPhone are aware of the extremely high cost of the devices?  Most of the Android phone switchers could buy 2-4 of their Android phones for the cost of one iPhone.

wood1208 11 Years · 2944 comments

Price matters to many so when higher end Android phones are closer in price to iPhones, there is no price advantage to be Android user. Moreover, older gen iPhones coming down in price and lots of used iPhones on market at lower price. This covers whole spectrum of phone users who wanted to switch to IOS but price was prohibitive factor. So, fifth of Android phone users switch to IPhone possible.

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gatorguy 14 Years · 24709 comments

wood1208 said:
Price matters to many so when higher end Android phones are closer in price to iPhones, there is no price advantage to be Android user. Moreover, older gen iPhones coming down in price and lots of used iPhones on market at lower price. This covers whole spectrum of phone users who wanted to switch to IOS but price was prohibitive factor. So, fifth of Android phone users switch to IPhone possible.

..and that's been reported to be possible but even true for a very long time. By now Android would presumably have disappeared based on all the claims of them switching to iOS by the millions dating back years.

 I've seen surveys that claim over 60% of all teenagers already own an iPhone, others that say 80% are buying one. I've seen surveys that say most current iPhone owners will be upgrading to "the new iPhone" pretty much every year, another that says half of all current iPhone owners will upgrade this year, and then another that says only about 20% will upgrade within the next 12 months. Apparently surveys might be unreliable. Who knew?

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rotateleftbyte 13 Years · 1636 comments

And in other countries (i.e. Not the USA) the situation is probably the other way around.
It would be nice if the article mentioned where the survey was done and when.

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muthuk_vanalingam 9 Years · 1432 comments

gatorguy said:
wood1208 said:
Price matters to many so when higher end Android phones are closer in price to iPhones, there is no price advantage to be Android user. Moreover, older gen iPhones coming down in price and lots of used iPhones on market at lower price. This covers whole spectrum of phone users who wanted to switch to IOS but price was prohibitive factor. So, fifth of Android phone users switch to IPhone possible.
..and that's been reported to be possible but even true for a very long time. By now Android would presumably have disappeared based on all the claims of them switching to iOS by the millions dating back years. I've seen surveys that claim over 60% of all teenagers already own an iPhone, others that say 80% are buying one. I've seen surveys that say most current iPhone owners will be upgrading to "the new iPhone" pretty much every year. Apparently surveys might be unreliable. Who knew?

Funnily, the data coming out of same survey can be "interpreted" in many ways. Give the same survey results to an Android supporter, headline would read something like "30% of Apple users are going to buy an Android phone next, hence Apple is doomed". Give it to a Huawei supporter, headline would read something like "Most of the iPhone buyers are looking to buy a Huawei phone next" and so on. We need to always take the data and conclusions coming out of any survey with a pinch of salt.

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