The rise of Android in m-retailing continues. Outdoor accommodation specialist Pitchup.com has released sales figures for January 2015 showing that, for the first time, Android smartphones are outperforming Apple’s iPhone in terms of revenue.
When comparing revenue generated from smartphone bookings in January 2015, Android smartphones have nudged ahead.
Of smartphone bookings made in January 2015, Android operating systems made up 48.1% of total revenue, with iOS generating 46.5%. The rest was made up of other operating systems, mostly Windows Phone.
This is a huge leap from a year ago, when iOS accounted for almost 60% of total revenue from smartphone bookings, with Android making up 40%.
Although still small, use of the Windows Mobile operating system is growing rapidly. Pitchup.com statistics show the Windows Mobile operating system accounted for 1.4% of smartphone revenue in January 2014. A year later, that figure has grown to 4.6%.
When it comes to bookings made on tablets, iPads still lead the way but other operating systems are fast catching up: iPad’s share of tablet revenue has fallen from 81.2% to 72.3%, with Android growing from 18.3% to 25.6% year-on-year. The boom in 7” Android tablets appears to account for most of this shift.
Pitchup.com founder Dan Yates says: “We’re keeping a keen eye on the changes in booking habits and it will be interesting to see whether Android smartphone revenue continues to outperform iPhone over the next few months and further into the future.
“What we are certain about is that customers are becoming more confident about booking on their smartphones and that smartphone usage and ownership is growing, with smartphone bookings hitting 21% of Pitchup.com’s overall total in December.
Recent statistics from eMarketer show Android’s market share of UK smartphone users rising 3.4 points in 2014, from 49.6% to 53.0%, iOS gaining 1.5 points to 30.5% and Windows Phone 1.7 points to 7.5%. Windows overtook BlackBerry, which lost 4.5 points to end the year at only 6.5%.
And Poq Studios has found that Android users are much more App-happy than their iOS counterparts – and that those with high end Droid devices spend as much as Apple heads.
On average, Android users spent a whole minute longer than iOS users each time they browsed through one of Poq’s client’s apps (Android: 4:47min, iOS: 3:48min). They also viewed 5.2 more pages than iOS users each time they used an app (Android: 14 pages, iOS: 8.8 pages). Poq also discovered the same pattern when it looked at traffic to its clients’ mobile sites.
The data also revealed that users of most Android devices, high- or low-end, spent longer discovering products on Poq clients’ apps than iOS users did. Users of the Samsung Galaxy S Mini spent on average 1:05 minutes longer per time they visited their apps than iOS users did.
This has been backed up by Poq client House of Fraser , which recently rolled out its own Android app to meet increasing consumer demand.
