Category: Featured News

Android users lag in importance behind Apple customers in mobile commerce

As opportunities in mobile commerce continue to grow and change, retailers consistently say that Apple consumer rule mobile commerce despite lower smartphone sales. However, it appears that though iPhone users are a minority they are far more likely to use their smartphones to make purchases and otherwise engage in mobile commerce.

Lucrative mobile commerce business

Apple seems to have bigger visibility with iPhones, but sales for Android powered phones accounted for 52.5 percent of smartphone sales and iPhones made up just 34.3 percent. Those figures can be misleading through, because Apple has huge gains and sales in the tablet market with the iPad alone dominating with 76 percent of the market share. Android and other manufacturers make up the rest.

However, that does not account for those actually using their smartphones to make mobile commerce transactions. These are essentially payments made by use of the smartphone – allowing some consumers to leave their wallet at home. Apple’s iPhone users may be a smaller crowd, but they are by far the most likely to use a smartphone for a purchase rather than whipping out the credit card or paying in cash.

The difference is in the user

Though iPhones account for lower sales, they are higher priced than most Android powered smartphones. In essence, those with less expendable income are far more likely to get a less expensive Android when smartphone shopping. The iPhone user is more into using the smartphone for all of the capacities it possesses and are more likely to be up to trying newer trends like mobile commerce transactions for simply buying coffee at a corner shop. Android users are in on the action, but are far behind iPhone consumers in cash to spend and on the willingness to try new ways of spending it.

Kevin Edwards of Affiliate Window said, “Apple users are typical early adopters. They’re generally tech-savvy individuals who embrace new ways of interacting and transacting online.” He also theorizes that Apple customers are more comfortable about shopping and more confident in shopping online. Not only are iPhone users more active in mobile commerce, the same can be said for iPad users as well.

The think tank has raised considerable concerns regarding consumer safety and security.

In 2012, a geolocation privacy bill by Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, in order to provide the users of smartphones with a greater degree of control over the way that their data is controlled.

However, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation feels this legislation is problematic.

The law that was proposed would make it necessary for app developers to require users to specifically opt in to programs that would allow for the collection or disclosure of geolocation data. It would no longer be permitted for apps to automatically select that option, so that users would need to actively opt out if they did not wish to share their information in that way.

The geolocation data was not being protected by the companies that collected it, said Franken.

According to the senator, the “Companies that collect our location information are not protecting it the way they should.” At that time, he made reference to a number of errors and blunders regarding privacy, which had drawn considerable media attention. This included reports that Android and iPhone devices were sending the geolocation data of their users to Google and Apple.

Not to mention the CarrierIQ fiasco. That company was a part of a high profile discovery in 2011, when the researcher demonstrated that its software was capable of logging the keystrokes that were made on smartphones.

While it is Franken’s intention to reintroduce the geolocation privacy bill in 2013, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a think tank, is openly arguing that this proposed law may not encourage positive changes. In fact, it called the legislation “particularly problematic for apps that are supported by location-based advertising.”

It explained that the bill, which was designed to protect a user’s privacy in the face of geolocation technology and use, would require a user to have to give consent every time the app intends to work with a new ad network. This, they say, would generate awkward consumer notices. The think tank’s behaviors in the past have not indicated that they are adverse to advertising techniques such as pop-ups, which they recently used to state that they were rejecting do-not-track requests.