Ah, the marketing sleight-of-hand, it’s something to behold. On one hand, Android sales are thundering past the iPhone. Yet, on the other hand, buyers are finding Android isn’t as easy-to-use as iPhone, resulting in returns of 30-40 percent.
By comparison, Apple’s iPhone 4 had a 1.7 percent return rate during the height of last year’s “Antennagate” fiasco. Why the difference? Essentially, geeks love the Android’s tech speak, but when your average consumer gets hold of a handset powered by the Google operating system, they get lost.
“For the ‘average’ phone user, Android is a maze,” according to TechCrunch. That’s something Apple has fine-tuned, down to one button. So, millions of Android-based phones are selling, but nearly half that many are being returned. Meanwhile, around 98 percent of iPhone owners are happy. You have to wonder if that difference will make it into a promo for the next Android phone?
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
