With the holidays upon us and many attractive tech offers and deals encouraging holiday shopping and gifts, we are bound to purchase new technology in our personal or professional quality. The two biggest names in mobility would be Apple and Google, if we schematize the market. And since it only comes natural to invest emotions in our technology as well as money, it is interesting to see how these two rivals are perceived in terms of sympathy and antipathy, or, to put it more straightforward, in love or hate terms.
Seamless integration or unlimited customization? Being able to control every detail of your tech universe or to creatively and segmentially organize a rich array of features?
These options juxtapose what many studies revealed to be Apple characteristics versus (Google’s) Android characteristics. Or, if you like, Apple versus Google.
When it comes to technology, which gradually fuses with our existence from dawn till dusk, embedding it in our lives both professionally and privately makes the big choices relevant. Leaving the circumstantial causation aside, what elements of our personality determine the way we choose our tech gear? What being an Apple person or an Android person tells someone about a peer, a colleague or a business partner?
In the process of using technology, everyone has positive and negative experiences – that reunite and counterbalance in the same device. If the dissatisfaction is outweighed by the positive experiences (functionality and design-wise), the tech interaction counts as a success. In addition, there are some conceptual differences between the two brands that should be supported by structural traits of their owners.
Online media comparisons between Apple and Android
Apple introduced an integrated experience: hardware and operating system perceived as a unity. It is seen as a brand, not just a platform. It sells the image of tech beauty and it is more likely to put users in front of an imaginary mirror where they might see themselves as almost perfect tech people. The entire experience is wrapped in user-friendly features, and although it might be lacking some particular elements in specific instances, the user could find itself already charmed at that point and accept some shortages. In an article that opposes Team Apple with Team Android, we may well notice that, besides the rankings that place Apple on the first place, their products seem to have charisma.
Another documented juxtaposition comes from analyzing the architecture used by both companies for their buildings/offices: Apple equals “monolithic beauty”, while Google equals “serendipity of messiness”. While Apple sticks with seamless integration, Google immerses in details.
When analyzing the AI race, another article (but be warned, it is coming from Cult of Mac), compares Siri with Google Now and appreciates the nifty features of the second app as well. But it all seems to conclude that Google Now is “no Siri”.
Another web comparison tackles the smartphones market, where Apple claims 90% of all profits so far. However, it entered the market sooner and the competition seems to recuperate the gap at a fast pace: the pre-June 2015 numbers showed that Samsung outdid Apple on the smartphones segment. The main reason for that would be Apple’s high price, which makes iPhones extremely expensive devices.
Customer comparison between Apple and Android
When launching a poll among my coworkers, twenty-eight percent have supported Apple (without feeling the urge to motivate their choice), fifty-four percent supported Android with very lengthy arguments, while another twenty-eight percent preferred to enumerate the different benefits of both contenders (and some of them suggested Windows mobile devices).
The most common reasons for choosing Android seem to be the customization options (people like to personalize their device, which is a limited choice for Apple gadgets in comparison to Android), the affordable price and the possibility of integrating Android with various non-Android devices.
Therefore, to summarize some of the core characteristics, that is what a sketch would look like for each of the brands:
Apple
- Seamless in-brand integration
- Flawless design
- Innovation
- Charisma
(In addition, the company’s privacy protection stance!)
Android
- Customization options
- A more affordable price
- Integration with Google Services and/or other products
- Variety in what supported devices are concerned
How would an Apple personality and an Android personality look like?
An Apple personality would be more focused on style and status, focused on emotions. High quality, speed and quality services weigh more than personalization. Their time is valuable and technology is not necessarily a part of their life they feel compelled to get in-depth with. As long as it works perfectly and they can afford it, Apple people are satisfied with reaping the benefits of the product without feeling the need to inspect the inside of their device or Operating System.
An Android person loves multitasking, is rather inquisitive and prone to be technically involved. Customizing their devices to imprint their mark on technology, appreciating the plethora of Google services, Android users like to enjoy variety, sharing and personally updating their systems with whatever they deem necessary. Worrying less about the tracking issues because their activities are so many and diversification is seen as an antidote to automatic characterization, the Android people are so proud of their devices’ affordability that relinquishing control to a certain degree is just a reasonable price to pay in this entire paradigm.
When uncertain about which type of technology to use while appreciating both the competitors in question, there are online tools to use, just out of curiosity or even more – to shed an extra light on the subject. Such a quiz is featured by Huffington Post here, based on the results of an Yahoo Tech survey on 1000 smartphone owners.
Another study makes use of the Yelp search data in order to define the two different types of smartphone owners. It mentions that Android users tend to be older than iPhone users, but nevertheless they love to be connected. It also mentions that interpreting the results of online searches is not as easy as it may seem, therefore the conclusions are more speculative than at first glance – just think on how autocomplete intervenes in searches. The only notable radical difference between iPhone owners and Android owners when it came to search keywords was that the Apple customers were clearly more brand-conscious, whereas the Android types used rather generic terms in their searches.
What do you think of this tech-personality matching exercise? Would it be worth taking into consideration when choosing the phones for you or your employees, or is it just a mere nuance element, and what really matters are the services, apps and features provided by each and every smartphone?
