Why can’t publishers get their Android users engaged?
Another set of media sales and usage figures indicates that the iOS audience is vastly more engaged, and out-performs Android in terms of traffic. Yet Android has the lion’s share of the market. Why is this?
Apple vs Android appears to have taken the primary position in tech debates on the web that used to be occupied by PC versus Linux, as Mathew Ingram found out recently when he wrote about changing his phone, and as Games Workshop are finding out with their decision to make books for iPad not Android devices.
The big mystery for the publishing industry though is just why iOS users are so much more engaged and valuable to their businesses than Android users, and more figures came out supporting that came out of the Digital Media Strategies conference this week.
Emma Fulton of News International revealed that “Android accounts for only 2 per cent views to The Times”, and Jon Bernstein of the Press Gazette also reported her saying that 87% of tablet and smartphone traffic to The Times is from Apple devices.
Stu Goulden tweeted some figures given out about the Sun at the same event — iOS users read 5x more articles, view 2x pages per visit, and watch 3x videos than Android users do.
These figures tally with the expectations set by the talks I saw back in October at the World Publishing Expo. In Germany, Stern’s print edition has a circulation of 800,000. They have 16,000 digital subscribers, with 1,000 single sale downloads weekly. Android sales only make up around 5% of the total.
Likewise, The Next Web stopped production on their Android magazine, after finding that “for every Android user that downloads an Android magazine we have 80 iOS downloads.”
Android enthusiasts often argue that publishers not making great products available is a reason for low take-up, but even when titles have been offered in parity, the skew for both download and usage figures is heavily in favour of iOS. I’d love to get the opportunity to really research why this is…
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by Martin Belam, February 20, 2013 
I’m a designer and journalist, and the founder of Emblem, a digital consultancy offering user experience design, information architecture and training services. I’ve spent over a decade building products for brands like the Guardian, Sony, Vodafone and the BBC, and now work with clients in the publishing, media, arts, heritage and culture sectors. To find out about working with us, please email.
In response to this on Twitter, Tom Phillips posted a picture of his “first run” experience of The Times on the Nexus device he’d actually received from them as part of the subscription deal.
hi, Martin, I have a feeling this will change this year.
If you have access to the stats for any large sites, it’s worth looking at the android vs ios split this month vs the same period last year.
I know of one magazine site that’s now at about half a million visits a month iOS, and quarter of a million android. (that is quite a way ahead of the general curve I think, but every case I see android has grown faster than iOS over the last year).
Android is behind on ‘pages per visit’ usually, until you split out phone vs tablet & see that the iOS number is pulled much higher by the iPad, and that iPhone & Samsung S2/S3 ‘pages per visit’ figures are usually pretty much the same.
Surely it’s pretty simple? People actively want iPhone for its features, quality and attractiveness etc. a large proportion of Android users are sim,y replacing their old non-smartphone with whatever they are recommended by the shop / for least money. Those people are not active “users” of stuff and just want to make calls and send texts.
I the same way many of those people previously had non-smart phones that e.g. could browse web or get/send email but they never sorted it out because they don’t need it.
Therefore that small minority of Android users who do participate in wider content are geeks/android fans, which is hardly representative of the Android user base.
Curiously the Kindle experience on the two platforms is also wildly different with major benefits for iOS users, including sound, despite the Kindle hardware using Android.
Could it be because US programmers love their Apple devices and therefore work harder on applications for their own devices. The hardware variety of Android, and programmers seeming dislike for following style rules and therefore breaking UIs also sound like good excuses for iOS’s continued dominance.
The numbers you mention, along with the sources, suggest something very different to me though. They suggest that iOS users have considerably more free time and are a little more deeply integrated into the consumerism of today’s society than Android users.
I’d hope that any further research you did would factor the job roles that iOS and Android users have, including the amount of time they -think- they have free to browse or use applications. Such research would be very interesting from an anthropological point of view (and guarantees the debate getting even more heated! ;)
So Windows users shy away from using all those websites that use stock art photos of happy Macbook Pro users?
I just had a look at the Google Analytics for the website of an author that I have access to. She’s a bestseller, so there is a reasonable amount of traffic.
1. Windows 59.28%
2. iOS 21.96%
3. Macintosh 9.32%
4. Android 5.76%
5. Linux 1.81%
This is a very real phenomenon, and I’m fascinated by what might be causing it.
“I used to think it was down to the user experience being worse on Android, but I don’t think that’s the case any more. Android’s not that bad right now (although many users are, of course, using older versions). I guess it might be something to do with the fact that people who buy Android devices aren’t buying something premium, and therefore use it exclusively for its more simple features, but isn’t browsing the web a pretty simple, basic feature? I find it rather perplexing.”
It’s truly a mystery. I don’t buy the UX arguments – they seem wishful thinking.
Not sure how we get from the usage figures to a useful hypothesis, though. I’d like to see research that controlled for a few different effects:
* data plans – I’ve heard that one of the reasons behind US android lag is that data plans sold with the iPhone are better. No idea if that’s still true.
* switchers v. first time users – I can see some sense in the argument that if you’re a heavy apps user, you’re less likely to switch from iPhone to Android. So, people switching to Android are those that use fewer apps in general. What’s the size of this effect?
* complementary devices – I’ve seen some hints that android users tend to have more devices available to them at any one time – an iPad, kindle or laptop. And iPhone users have just their iphone. I can’t imagine this has much effect, but it’s worth considering.
Plus, there’s obviously device-type to control for, which is very much more variable on Android.
I’ve seen many studies that characterise use through ad impressions. That seems wrong to me – app downloads, purchases or app usage are better measures.
In summary, who knows? And as you say, let’s do some proper research.
In your “round-up of reaction” followup post, you didn’t mention the point made above by Dan Barker: on many content-heavy sites, a lot of the traffic is from tablets, not phones — and tablets are dominated by iOS.
If Android’s increasing share of sophisticated smartphone users (like Mathew Ingram and Robert Scoble) is followed by an increasing share of sophisticated tablet users, and I don’t see why not, then the current lopsidedness in traffic should go away.
I must say that as an Android user, I do feel that I’m very much a second class citizen compared with iOS for publications apps of this sort.
I think that there are two solid reasons why the state of play has been what it has so far.
1. The phone argument, which is probably fair. iPhone users buy them for their feature-richness. Many (clearly not all) Android users just end up with them and don’t dig deep.
2. The lack of investment in Android publication apps compared with their iOS counterparts.
I think that the first point is harder to argue, although there is a certain degree of chicken and egg. But the second is pretty clear.
For example, aside from The Times, and perhaps the FT, none of the main newspapers has a fully produced Android app. There are some apps in the market, but they’re not nearly as feature-rich as the iOS equivalent. The Guardian’s Android app is a very poor online only experience compared with the iOS version.
I think as the tablet marketplace grows, and we see the explosion of Android tablets in particular with highly marketed devices like the Kindle HD and Nexus 7, the parity needs to be put in place.
As an aside it’s ironic that after The Times did it’s big “subscribe and get a Nexus for £50″ offer, a few weeks later their big “free apps” offer was all about iOS again.
I have an interest in photography and I know that some online only publications are leaving money on the table by not producing Android versions of their publications. They’ve looked at the numbers and decided that the additional investment is not currently worthwhile. Their choice. Perhaps today that investment doesn’t make sense. But tomorrow?
In the medium term, I think parity will be achieved. Today you can’t imagine a games developer only developing their AAA title for the PS3 and not the Xbox 360…