Across the world, the biggest smartphone manufacturers are Apple (28%), Samsung (24%), Xiaomi (12%), Oppo (6%) and Vivo (5%). However, there are geographic patterns in popularity, with Apple dominating North America and East Asia, while Samsung leads in South America, Europe, Africa and West Asia in addition to its home turf of South Korea. Xiaomi is the most popular phone brand across South Asia, Spain, Venezuela, Ukraine, Madagascar, Kyrgyzstan and Palestine, while Tecno is popular in West and Central Africa. Oppo, Vivo and Huawei lead in Indonesia, Bhutan and Togo respectively.
It’s really so sad to see how marketing alone can shape the landscape even when they 🍎 are scamming their users so hard.
Hello, I’m a dedicated Apple user who came across this post on the “all” feed while scrolling. I know that I’m not really the intended audience of this community so if I’m not welcome to discuss here, feel free to tell me to get lost. I don’t want to impose.
I thought it might interest you a bit for me to share my two cents - just for context, I’m very technically competent, much more than the average smartphone user. Feel free to ask me anything. I am not a fanboy of anything in particular except Star Wars, so I’m not particularly inclined to get defensive - I’ll try my best to stay objective and I’m very happy to talk about Apple’s flaws as well.
Anyways, with all that out of the way - my reason for continuing to to use iPhone isn’t because of marketing. I don’t buy it because I think it’s cool/trendy/whatever. I get it because I prefer the experience of iOS over Android. When I tried Android, I found it a lot harder to get things the way that I liked them, it generally felt like it needed a lot more hand-holding from me.
I definitely don’t feel scammed. I’ve been using iPhone since 2011 or so and I’ve been a Mac user since 2016 - most recently I feel like the Apple Silicon MacBooks are genuinely good value, but prior to that I would definitely say that Macs were relatively overpriced compared to Windows PCs. I feel like iPhone is priced maybe (~20% or so?) higher than a comparable Android device, but personally, to me, the price is absolutely worth the improved experience.
And I went from using an iPhone because eventually I couldn’t do anything I wanted to on it anymore. I couldn’t develop my own apps for personal use without jumping through stupid hoops, I couldn’t customize my experience in any way that wasn’t the approved Apple plan, the app environment was sparse (I know this has changed but it was terrible for years). I stopped being able to jailbreak them in order to give me a half-assed semblance of control over my phone.
Finally I gave up and moved to Android, around about 2010. No regrets whatsoever, and now I can install a privacy oriented version of Android on a lot of different phones, since it’s open source (sorta). I can use other app stores like Fdroid for FOSS apps. I shudder to think what would happen if Apple were the only phone maker.
I would go back to android if they had iMessage. That’s really what’s keeping me on iPhone.
Do you have a Mac? Or can run a Mac VM? You can use bluebubbles on a Mac that will let you use iMessage on non apple platforms
RCS on android is similar, and when IOS 18 comes out of beta it’ll finally support RCS which basically solves this completely. Uses wifi or data, sms fallback, works cross platform, and allows for high quality pictures/video, read receipts and reactions
Aren’t they suppose to be compatible with Android at some point due to the EU?
How in the fuck is this organized?
USA, Nigeria, Japan, India?
I don’t think this is accurate. It says Apple is the leading phone where I live, but the large majority of people here are too poor for an iPhone. Plus you rarely see people with them outside the rich areas of the city.
Tecno phones suck ass, I used to have one in nigeria
