Flawed study decides iPhone is for games, Android for apps

I refuse to click through to that article just based on the title, but as an Android user I have a much simpler explanation than the handful of comments I've read here. The first thing I advise people to do when the get their first Android phone is start looking for core apps to replace the worthless crap the handset vendor installed. In fact, when I'm asked what the benefits of Android are, one thing I always mention is that you can replace the stock apps for core features, which is good since you will probably want to.

On my phone I replaced* the built in apps for SMS, email, calendar, media player, launcher, clock, and weather. I also added an alternate widget for toggling the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, sync, and backlight. While most Android users may not customize their phones to quite that extent, I would be willing to bet at most people end up making 3 or 4 of those changes. I wouldn't necessarily even want do all that on an iPhone, but even if I wanted to it wouldn't be possible. So just to sum up, on Android you need to replace a bunch of crappy core apps while iOS has better core apps, many of which you couldn't change if you wanted to.

I'm sure there's probably flawed methodology involved as well, but even if there wasn't, Android users would probably appear more app oriented.

*Replaced isn't really the right word since I haven't bothered to load a generic ROM so all I actually got rid of was the AT&T bloatware when I rooted it.

Matthaus from Xyologic again. Just for fun we have put many other illustrations of the data sets which the blogger of this post asked for and we continue to publish each month on our site for free as simple illustrations:

iPhone - http://www.xyologic.com/blog/top-150-downloaded-apps-iphone-broken-down-by-categories/

iPad - http://www.xyologic.com/blog/op-150-downloaded-apps-ipad/

Android - http://www.xyologic.com/blog/top-150-downloaded-apps-android-broken-down-by-categories/

P.S. The Xyologic founders continue to love their iPhone and iPads.

Cool stuff.I'm keen on creating apps though I'm only a novice in programming but that doesn't prevent me from making complex and profitable apps.I'm using snappii.com and consider this service to be the most flexible concerning design opportunities among its competitors.

[sigh]

This is just one link-bait article being referenced by another.

The Xyologic article is flawed in many ways, surprisingly so.

Games are also apps, so the whole labeling scheme is silly!

The Xyologic article makes no mention of where the data were found or how they were collected! They could be making all sorts of tabulation mistakes. Is there a data list or data set somewhere? We could put the #s into a spreadsheet and quickly double-check their calculations.

In any event, there's another bizarre twist to this-- the Xyologic story focused on publishers, not just apps. The headline was

"The Top 25 iPhone and Android App **Publishers** in 2011 – iPhone is for Games, Android is for Apps"

The author wrote: "we find many app *publishers* among the Top 25 Downloaded Publishers on Android in 2011 with Google itself leading the way. In contrast, there is only one app *publisher* (Burbn who has created Instagram) among the Top 25 Downloaded *Publishers* on iPhone." Note the phrase-- "top 25 downloaded *publishers*"!

Xyologic still hasn't fixed its table headings to show that the Android data was also for free apps (a caption isn't sufficient)! And one number has a ridiculous typo in it-- 91,500,00 -- and shows up both in the 1st paragraph and the table. Doesn't anyone know how to proofread any more?

All this lower's one's confidence in their data and interpretations!

Just looked at the top 10 free apps on the iTunes store-- 5 games, 5 in other categories! OTOH, data always tell more than one story. Accepting Xy's data at face value, they show that Android's top 150 apps combined for fewer downloads November last year than iPhone's, but MORE this year!

And there's this: The Android game downloads are growing at a much faster rate and, if trends continue, the # of games in the top 150 will soon outpace the iPhone's. The Droid game downloads nearly quadrupled and the # of games in the top 150 nearly doubled. Headline could have been: "Android Top Downloads Now Outpace iPhone's; Droid Games Share Quadruples"

Kent Brockman: "Mr. Simpson, how do you respond to the charges that petty vandalism such as graffiti is down eighty percent, while heavy sack beatings are up a shocking nine hundred percent?" -- Homer Simpson: "Aw, you can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that."

Note the sneaky way Xyo"logic" does things: they ostensibly perform a study on user behavior, then draw a conclusion and post a headline about devices and platforms. iPhone users download more games, ergo the iPhone is "for" games. Got that?

Oh yeah, no hidden agenda here.

What's that? Another article criticizing iO?

That's nice, but my employer, a $20B Fortune 250, won't allow Android due to security concerns.
Homeland security allows BB and iPhone, due to security concerns.

So any "analysis" like this is absolutely moot for a most of industry/government - iOS has won the tablet/device war that Palm started.

nothing to see here... back to sleep... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

No matter how you use your iPhone or Android device, Xyologic (i.e., Matthäus Krzykowski) has a message for you: the iPhone is a toy, and Android is for serious users.

All derived from dubious data, and more than a stretch even if it wasn't so derived.

Too rich. Corporate America begs to differ.

It's readily apparent to any serious observer which users like to "toy around" with their phones. You might say that just using an Android is a game in itself.

Let me get this straight. Some "analyst"—-and we've seen what that means lately, haven't we?—writes the sensationalist headline "iPhone is for games," and some people are having problems with TUAW having a problem with that?

Even if the data behind Xyologic's conclusions is valid, the conclusion is an Apple-hater's and Android fan's dream. It's tantamount to punishing the iTunes App store for having more game apps than does the Android Market.

The explanations from Xyologic are tantamount to the prattling of a pathological liar. First they fail to identify any of the apps as free, save for a single parenthetical insert. The rest of the article gave the reader the clear impression that Xyologic was dealing with the entire app marketplace—as it should, if the extraordinary conclusion in the headline was to be at all plausible. Upon being called out on this, Krzy first claimed that all of the apps considered were free ones—meaning that the broad conclusion in Xyologic's headline *isn't* justifiable. Later, he claimed that he had failed to identify the Android apps as free by "mistake." So we're to believe that he only went out of his way to identify the iPhone apps as such.

Credible? Not in my book.

Even if Xylogic's claims were valid and based on solid, pertinent data, in no way does it justify such an incendiary headline as "iPhone is for games." That's a direct attack on the credibility of the phone and its platform, Krzy's claims otherwise notwithstanding.

The sensationalism is in Xyologic's headline, not in TUAW's. TUAW is right to stand up and call things as they are.