iPads were a popular purchase on Black Friday this year, and especially so for Android smartphone owners. About 40 percent of last Friday's online iPad purchases were attributed to the Android smartphone camp, which doesn't bode well for Google's mobile operating system or the companies that make rely on it for their products.
The lure of Apple is strong for many Android device owners
That statistic comes from InfoScout vice president Alexandre Linares who said his company was able to analyze Black Friday purchases in real time. He said,
Our U.S.-based panel of Android & iOS users submitted over 90,000 shopping trip receipts within the day, giving us plenty of data to work with. As we noted in our previous posts, iPads are this year's hottest commodity. To our surprise, however, we found that roughly 40 percent of Black Friday iPad purchases could be attributed to existing Android smartphone users. This discovery clearly poses a challenge for Android moving forward and heightens the importance of Chromecast as Google competes for mindshare in the living room of the future.
Mr. Linares brought Chromecast, Google's streaming home entertainment device, into the fight because he sees Android OS as one of the competitors in the Internet connected living room market along with Apple TV and Roku. With Android users interested in the iPad, and by extension iOS, the likelihood they'll choose Apple TV over Chromecast for their home entertainment system.
While that's a longer term concern for the Android market, the real threat today is the number of Android device owners that are either supplementing or replacing their current devices with iPads. Despite high sales for Android-based devices, InfoScout's data shows there doesn't seem to be the same loyalty among its users as is found among iPhone and iPad owners. With companies like Samsung depending on Android to help drive smartphone and tablet sales, the lure of iOS looks like a serious threat.
InfoScout's data accounts for iPad purchases from mobile devices, not all sales, so it accounts for only a percentage of Black Friday iPad purchases. Considering those sales went to shoppers that already own Android devices, however, it's a pretty clear indicator that cheap prices and the it's not Apple mindset aren't enough to keep buyers from jumping to the iPad.