Android is struggling to keep its market share in the United States, as Apple continues to take over in the market. But, despite Android as a whole losing ground, Google Pixel phones are becoming a bigger slice of the US market.
Counterpoint Research reports that, in Q2 2023, US smartphone shipments dropped by 24% year-over-year. That includes both iPhones and Android phones, and virtually every brand saw a drop in shipments. Samsung saw US shipments drop by 37% while Motorola saw a 17% drop. TCL saw the biggest decline at just shy of 70% year-over-year, and even Apple saw a 6% drop.
Well there’s your problem. You’re looking at Samsung phones.
Honestly, they’re one of the worst when it comes to bloatware. They do it because their devices are so popular that they can get away with it. Stick with a Pixel, and you can’t go wrong.
(BTW, what’s with iPhone users’ obsession with iMessage? Google Messages has the same capabilities. Not trying to hate; genuinely curious. If your only experience with texting on Android is with using whatever came with your device, then I understand why you’d prefer Apple’s implementation. That’s the whole appeal of Android: if you don’t like how a component works, you can swap it out.)
To answer the iMessage thing.
I’m from the states but live in a different country. It’s the easiest free way to stay in touch with family and friends.
A number of people have been like “just move to X and if they don’t follow, then forget about them.”
But it’s not really realistic to ask all the people I might contact throughout the year to switch to a new app in case I contact them.
So I truly feel locked in because of that.
Please elaborate further. What’s so special about iMessage that it can be used in other countries, but every single messaging app for Android can’t? Google Messages is free too. Again, not trying to hate. Just trying to understand.
I don’t know anyone who uses google messages and I’m not going to convince the 20 people on my group chat to switch to it since we only catch up a few times per year.
Random acquaintances that I contact a few times per year will also not bother to figure it out as it will just idle 9 months of the year.
It’s just a real roadblock that locked people into the platform.
I use Google Messages to chat with my family who mostly use iMessage. I can see all the reactions and stuff so there aren’t really any compatibility issues. You don’t need an iphone or iMessage to communicate with people on iMessage.
But if I use google messages, it will be sent as an sms. So suddenly I have to pay for every international text and call made.
I’m from the states, but I do not live there at the moment.
It’s much easier for me to keep iOS instead of trying to convert 100 people to use some other messaging app.
Where I live, no one uses iMessage and I have all the major chat apps installed. So it’s not a problem for me, but even my parents struggled to understand what WhatsApp was and they are decently tech savvy.
One thing about iMessage is that you can reply and send messages from all your Apple devices. I know the https://messages.google.com/ but the you need to keep it open on your computer for notification to come. Then there is the Facetime video/audio quality, it’s miles better than Whatsapp, Google Meet or any other video calling app. You can easily share your screens, you can even start a call on iPhone and transfer the call easily to a Mac or iPad seamlessly without even cutting the call. Also the Whatsapp and Google Meet video call quality is like 140p vs 1080p on Facetime. For the average the user who has never used iMessage and Facetime they will never understand what they are missing but for others it’s different case.
You don’t really have to choose. I have WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and Threema installed all at the same time. I don’t like Apple and since there’s no iMessage for Android (I guess), I can’t use that. But that’s not really my choice, it’s Apple’s choice. I won’t let them lock me down into their ecosystem. Just send SMSes to the people you only have on iMessage and that don’t understand why they are implicitly forcing their opinion on others.
99% of my contacts are iMessage only. It would be cheaper to just buy a second phone than to pay international calling and sms rates.
I have like 10 chat apps installed for local contacts. It’s just US contacts that don’t understand his to get off iMessage.