Android is the most used mobile operating system on the planet. As of June 2021, it was used in 73% of all smartphones worldwide, and these numbers have kept going up consistently over the course of time.
But iOS stays firm as the second place worldwide, and iPhones have an increasing dominance in countries like the United States. In these countries, a lot of Android users constantly move over to iOS, particularly around the time when new iPhones come out.
Today, we're looking at things Google, and Android OEMs in general, can do to turn this tide around.
Promote Its Unique Features Better
A big part of the crowd that's moving to the iPhone in markets like the United States, for the most part, do so not really because they were unhappy with their current devices, but rather because of either social pressure or preconceived notions about the differences between iOS and Android.
While both operating systems are good on their own, Android is often perceived as a laggy and overall inferior operating system by some people, particularly younger users.
Among these preconceived notions are that Android phones are slow, have bad cameras, or brick easily. And these notions usually come from using cheaper, sub-$100 devices and thinking all Android phones perform the same when that's usually not the case.
What can Android do to turn that around? Tackling these erroneous notions head-on while also promoting the uniqueness of the Android ecosystem and some of the unique features that might be appealing to these users.
Showing people how Android is not actually inferior to iOS, that there's a lot of Android smartphones that are right up there with iPhones in terms of speed, performance, and features, and highlighting the uniqueness and openness of Android as an operating system, with features like home screen customization, choice of default apps for whatever you want, split-screen, and more, can help a struggling Android user decide whether they really want an iPhone or if they would actually be fine getting another, newer Android phone.
Improve Updates and Support
The update conundrum has always been one of the biggest Achilles heels of Android phones.
On an iPhone, it's very normal to get, at least, 5 years of major system updates. The iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, and iPhone SE (first generation), launched with iOS 9 in 2015 and are set to receive iOS 15, making for a total of six major updates. This kind of support in Android is completely unheard of.
While some 2015 phones can be updated to Android 11 unofficially using custom ROMs like LineageOS, most Android devices released in 2015 reached EOL (end-of-life) status around 2017-2018. And that was a very long time ago.
There's also the problem of Android OEMs and carriers being slow to roll out updates. iPhones usually receive iOS updates in a matter of weeks. Android phones, on the other hand, can vary wildly. Some phone manufacturers will do okay, but others will do worse and take a good few months to roll out a new Android update to one of their phones.
It's a phenomenon that's present across all Android partners, and it's been an issue for years. Android distribution numbers and charts used to show that Android versions were all over the place and very few people were actually using the latest version, right up until Google stopped publishing those charts on the web.
By contrast, over 80% of iPhones are currently using iOS 14.
That's a big contrast Android needs to address going forward. While some Android manufacturers have started to commit to longer and more frequent update schedules, these commitments usually only include security updates, which are good, but not ideal.
This is one of the few shortcomings that are expected to be addressed by Google with the Pixel 6 series. Now that the company will be shipping an in-house SoC nothing is really stopping it from rolling out iOS-like updates now.
Improve Security and Privacy
This part isn't really as one-sided as it once was, as Google has made extensive efforts to improve both security and privacy across the whole Android ecosystem.
From features like Scoped Storage that completely revamp the way apps access your phone's filesystem, to smaller but still important features like granular permissions and all the subsequent changes being made to them over the years, Android has gotten a lot better in this regard.
Still, iOS is often regarded as the top tier of smartphones in regards to security and privacy. Apple rolls out fixes to critical security flaws in mere days or even hours, the whole ecosystem is harder to penetrate, apps are not as easy to sideload as on Android, and the App Store has stricter guidelines and requirements than the Google Play Store.
A lot of smartphone users with security at the top of their list are probably using an iPhone, and we can clearly see why. Nonetheless, Android is improving, and we're glad to see it move in that direction.
Improve Simplicity of Use
A lot of the arguments in favor of going Apple usually include that iOS is simply easier to get into and use than Android. This is mostly a thing of preference, though. While Android isn't exactly hard to use, Apple applies the "it just works" philosophy to both its hardware and software, and it's thus considered more "beginner-friendly" than Android.
It's uniform across the entire Apple ecosystem, it's considered to be less cluttered than Android devices, and it comes with most of the things a user might need out of the box. It's, overall, a better platform for accessibility. Android, on the other hand? Users might either find it to be very easy or very hard to use depending on what Android phone they buy.
Stock Android is as sleek as it gets, but someone using a Google Pixel phone and then moving to a Samsung or OnePlus phone might find themselves with a very different experience and quirks they might not have had on their previous phone.
Unfortunately, this is not something that has a short-term solution, unless Google forces everyone to use stock Android, which is not a realistic option. Luckily, a lot of Android manufacturers have been moving towards simpler UIs through the past few years, and we might find ourselves with this situation improving soon.
Android 12 also aims to be easier to use, but we'll have to see how that translates to third-party OEM skins.
Android Can Get More Appealing
Most of the things we mentioned above are things that Google is currently working towards solving or are easier to solve in the short term. Not only making Android better, but also making it more appealing, can help prevent the movement of Android users to iOS, and even flip some iOS users in the process as well.
The Google Pixel 6 series seems like the closest thing to an "Android iPhone" we'll be getting. Google's switch to its Tensor in-house chip for its SoC, gives the company for the first time the same kind of hardware and software control Apple has on iPhones.
We'll have to see the impact it will make on other Android phones before being the judges.
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