Apple and Google better watch out. According to a new study by Accenture, two-thirds of smartphone and tablet owners don’t have strong brand loyalty to any one particular operating system.
The study reveals that 24 percent would switch just to look for other available options in the market, another 23 percent would shift for a better user experience, and the rest 23 percent would drop their current mobile operating system to “get access to more innovative services and applications.”
So basically, it’s a bad news for current mobile leaders Apple and Google but a good one for outside-looking-in mobile wannabe Microsoft.
“Overall, our survey found there is not widespread loyalty among consumers about operating systems used on their smartphones, tablets and PCs,” Kumu Puri, a managing director at Accenture said. “They are willing to try different operating systems and are not, generally, locked into using any one single platform.”
But this seems to be surprising, especially if we consider the strength of ecosystem, which is one of the key factors that mobile device manufacturers see as a core strength. Because if someone owns an iOS device, then moving away from Apple means leaving all the purchased apps, music, movies, books and expensive content behind. The same applies, increasingly, with Google Play.
One reason why people switch is simple curiosity – just to know what’s on the other side. Other reasons include lower costs, less hassle, higher security, and better syncing with an in-car system. But all these factor are associated with different OS. For example lower costs would come on the Android side, less hassle on the Apple side, and better in-car syncing with a Microsoft solution. But the survey did not go into that depth in explaining the details.
In the survey the people who were defined as “strong users”, having at least two devices running a single mobile operating system were not different either. Seventeen percent of them thought it was “extremely important” having all or almost all of their devices on a single platform, while only another five percent of the group agreed with them.
“In fact, about one-fifth of this group actually seems to be strong users by coincidence,” the study says. “They say they don’t have a preferred OS or don’t care what operating system they have.”
This is something that Google, Apple and Microsoft should keep in mind while building their ecosystems, who will have to entrap customers every time they bring out new devices.
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