U.S. iPhone Ownership Predicted to Exceed Android Ownership By 2015 [Chart]

The number of iPhone owners is predicted to exceed the number of Android owners in the U.S. by 2015 due to strong platform loyalty, reports Yankee Group via AllThingsD.

Yankee Group surveyed 16,000 customers over the past year asking about which smartphones they own and which they intend to buy. About half of all smartphone owners used an Android device and about 30% used an iPhone. Out of those that plan to buy a smartphone in the next half year, 42% said they would buy Android and 42% said they would buy iPhone.

Of those surveyed, 91 percent of iPhone owners intend to buy another iPhone, while 6 percent plan to switch to an Android device with their next purchase. In other words, more than nine out of 10 iPhone owners are loyal to the platform. Once you buy an iPhone, chances are high you’re going to buy another. That’s not quite as true for Android. Yankee found that 76 percent of Android owners intend to buy another Android phone. A big number, sure. But it means that 24 percent of Android phone users plan to switch to another platform. Guess where the majority of those professed switchers are going — 18 percent to iPhones.


Yankee Group VP Carl Howe gives us an analogy:

“Think of the Apple and Android ecosystems as two buckets of water. New smartphone buyers — mostly upgrading feature phone owners — fall like rain into the two big buckets about equally, with a smaller number falling into Windows Phone and BlackBerry buckets. However, the Android bucket leaks badly, losing about one in five of all the owners put into it. The Apple bucket leaks only about 7 percent of its contents, so it retains more of the customers that fall into it. The Apple bucket will fill up faster and higher than the Android one, regardless of the fact that the Apple bucket may have had fewer owners in it to begin with.”

Of course, these predictions assume that loyalty rates will continue at their current levels; however, it's always possible that loyalty could change to more strongly favor either side.

Check out the chart below for more details...


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