the Stickiness of a Mobile OS
According to a recent Nielsen study 89% of iPhone owners in the US expressed their intent to remain on the iPhone OS platform for their next smartphone purchase. And since Apple is the only one offering devices with iPhone OS, this practically translates to a staggeringly high retention rate for Apple.
On the other hand, the shooting star of the year, the Android platform, can report that 71% of its users want to remain on the same platform. However this does not necessarily translate into retention for the manufacturers.
With this kind of “stickiness” of the mobile platform Nokia’s strategy of investing heavily in their “own” platforms (Symbian and Meego) seems to make sense. Let’s hope that their next releases can live up to their high expectations.
However, in the meantime the other manufacturers are not doing terribly bad in capitalizing on the Android hype [gigaom]:
But the uptake of Android among handset-makers is another factor in such growth. Motorola’s Mobile Device division has swung from losses to profits on the back of Android […] And HTC [..] embraced Android even as Microsoft’s mobile platform is undergoing a major facelift. The result? HTC revenues were up 66 percent in June from a year ago.
