Here's what Android owners do when Apple releases a new iPhone
iPhone users have been spending the last few hours pounding Apple's servers, begging the Cupertino, Calif.-based giant to take hundreds of dollars off them in exchange for a new smartphone, but what have Android users been up to?
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While we don't have data for the past few hours, we do have data as to what people were up to this time last year, thanks to the Ericsson Mobility Report for November 2015 [PDF]. Here we get data on how Android and iPhone owners both behave in the month following an iPhone launch compared to the rest of the time.
This is the state of play before the launch of a new iPhone:
Ignoring Windows Phone (because this appears to be a volatile segment, and one which has dwindled to a point where it won't be much of an issue this time around), we find that 1.7 percent of Android users upgrade, compared to 1.1 percent of iPhone users. On top of that, about 0.4 percent of iPhone owners migrate to Android, while 0.3 percent go the other way.
Compare that to what happens after an iPhone launch.
Now we're seeing an increase in upgrades for both Android and iPhone users. For Android users, it's only a small increase (to 1.8 percent), but among iPhone users, there's a massive increase of 4.5 percent.
The migrations are more interesting. A new iPhone pulls twice as many Android users to iOS as iOS users who are pushed to Android (0.6 percent versus 0.3 percent).
So, while for most of the year Android is picking up dissatisfied iOS users, a new iPhone is the time all that flips on its head and Android users make the jump to iPhone.
Top Android smartphones (September 2016)
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