M+E Daily
A New Digital Divide
Story Highlights
By Paul Sweeting
More people buy Android devices than buy iOS devices but they don’t seem to do much with them. In a widely discussed blog post yesterday, Asymco analyst Horace Dediu highlighted the huge gap in mobile e-commerce traffic over the Thanksgiving weekend between the two platforms. Citing data from the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark survey, Dediu noted that Android devices accounted for only 23 percent of mobile online traffic on Black Friday, compared with 74 percent for iOS, despite Android’s larger overall share of the device market.
Dediu offers a variety of possible explanations for the skew, noting in particular that tablets have become the go-to device for actually completing mobile online purchases, and Apple’s share of the tablet market is much larger than its share of the smartphone market. That comports with the conclusions of a , which found the iPad to be the biggest factor in driving mobile e-commerce.
Whatever the reason, though, the huge usage gap between platforms holds potentially major implications for media companies and content distributors as they develop their mobile strategies. In effect, consumer platform preference is starting to look like a pretty good proxy for engagement generally, with iOS users being far more engaged with mobile content, commerce and functionality than are Android users.
Insofar as engagement is a crucial component to many online content monetization schemes, the data suggest that targeting iOS users will produce a much higher return on investment than targeting Android users (the impact of Blackberry and Windows mobile use is negligible at this point).
It would be useful to know whether similar difference in engagement can be found among users of non-mobile platforms, such as PlayStation vs. Xbox streaming or smart TVs vs. set-top boxes.
