Read update
It’s no secret that Android is the most-used operating system in the world, a title it first earned after surpassing Windows in 2017. Unfortunately, that’s a fact not quite represented in the US. Although Android held the top mobile OS spot for years,Apple finally managed to overtake the competitionin September of 2022, surpassing 50 percent market share for the first time. As you’d probably guess, those numbers have only increased from there.
There’s no shortage of blame to go around for the ever-widening gap betweenvarious Android-flavored choicesand the annual iPhone upgrade, but one place that seems to go under-analyzed is teenagers. With younger audiences adopting smartphones earlier than ever, it’s no surprise they’ve found themselves entrenched in a dedicated ecosystem from a young age.
Unfortunately, it might spell even more trouble for Android’s install base in the US, both in the short term and for years to come.
About a month ago, investment firm Piper Sandler released itslatest biannual study of teenagers, surveying over 9,000 adolescents across America from various regions and backgrounds to determine trends across dozens of industries. It’s an interesting enough report to dive into — video games are up, fashion is down — but the line that caught my eye was, unsurprisingly, based around smartphones. According to this year’s report, 87 percent of teenagers surveyed own an iPhone, while 88 percent expect to buy an iPhone as their next device.
At the risk of sounding overdramatic, these are death spiral numbers for Android in the US. No amount of adjusting for the margin of error can make these statistics sound healthy for Google’s future in mobile. Put simply, Android isn’t cool with the American youth of today, and that’s a problem. It speaks to some of the underlying rot facing Android’s future, and unfortunately, only some of it can be improved by Google in the future.
UPDATE: 2025-07-09 13:49 EST BY WILL SATTELBERG
Apple has announced RCS support for iOS
Two days after this post was published,Apple announced RCS supportis coming to iOS in 2024, where it will co-exist alongside iMessage and SMS. You can read more about Apple’s announcement here. The original piece follows.
Baby’s first ecosystem
To me, Android’s problems here lie in three distinct spaces: ecosystem lock-in, advertising, and bad experiences. The first is, by far, the factor playing the biggest exponential role here. With an average age just shy of 16, the respondents to this poll were nearly all born in a post-iPhone world. Their parents almost certainly had smartphones, whether they used early iOS devices orproducts from Samsung and HTC. There’s a strong chance their first smartphone wasn’t a low-end or budget Android phone, but a hand-me-down iPhone.
That’s to say nothing of the earliest experience these kids likely had with Apple products:the iPad. Bouncing from a tablet to a smartphone linked by the same operating system was crucial in developing a sense of Apple’s ecosystem early, and as these respondents have gotten older, they’ve only dug in their heels more. Piper Sandler’s study points out that 34 percent of teens also own an Apple Watch. That’s one in three teenagers who have purchased (or, at the very least, inherited) an optional, expensive accessory purpose-built for a single device. You won’t find that level of dedication anywhere in the Android ecosystem, especially among younger users.
Let’s address the elephant in the room: iMessage. You can find plenty of ink spilled about the effect blue bubble exclusivity has on group chats across high schools in the US. A2022 report in the Wall Street Journaldetailed stories from teenagers and young adults alike, all with the same theme: Android users — denoted by their green bubbles in iMessage groups — are looked down upon in both social and dating scenes. This alone likely played a role in pushing iPhone usage for ages 18-24 up to 74 percent in 2021, compared to 40 percent for those older than 24.
Yes, this is a phenomenon that, by and large, only exists in North America — the prevalence and popularity of cross-platform messaging apps like WhatsApp or Telegram in many other countries makes sure of that. But whether or not it affects the average smartphone shopper in the US (and, frankly, I’d argue that level of peer-pressuredoesexist even among older millennials), it is undoubtedly a factor when younger users pick their first smartphone.
Yes, we’ve seen chat platforms come and go — I’m just old enough to remember AIM statuses, even if I was, perhaps, a little young to be on the platform. But the lead Apple has here is immeasurable, instilling its products asthego-to platform for an entire generation of Americans, without any signs of a coming crash. Unless some level of regulation is put in place to add cross-platform enriched messaging features across iOS and Android, it’s hard to imagine this issue resolving itself any time soon.
Hammering the point home, again and again
It’s a little too convenient to chalk up these trends to ecosystem lock-in alone, though. Advertising likely plays just as large of a role. Apple’s iPhone ads have always been slickly produced;you’re able to’t say the same about every Android company. What’s worse, though, is the carriers. Tune into any NFL game this season and you won’t just find in-house Apple ads. You’ll find AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon all promoting trade-in deals. Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes aren’t telling you about the latest Pixel 8 Pro deals —they’re talking about titanium.
Then there’s the low-end Android market. Teens thathavepreviously used Android phones or tablets likely did so on cheap, budget products that failed to convince them to stick around. Amazon might not advertise theirkid-friendly Fire tablets as Android slates, but they’re slow enough to leave a mark. The same goes for older products from various Android OEMs. While I’d argue $300 can get you a pretty solid budget smartphone these days, you don’t need to rewind the clock back too far to find a time when that wasn’t the case.
Apple, meanwhile, has only flirted with budget-friendly products. Alongside Chromebooks, the $329 iPad has become a staple of the education market, as the two race to win over potential customers at the youngest ages possible. That slate, low-cost as it may be, is leaps and bounds ahead of the cheapest Android alternatives. Perhaps more damning, though, is theiPhone SE, a device my former AP colleague Ryne Hager referred to as an “easy Android off-ramp.” You or I might recognize it doesn’t hold a candle to Google’s Pixel A-series phones, but that might not matter when it has iMessage.
It only takes one low-cost device missing updates or running slowly to convince a consumer that the iPhone all of their friends already have is the way to go, even if a comparable Android device would provide the exact experience they’re looking for. Unfortunately, most teens starting out on Android aren’t likely to use aGalaxy S23 Ultra— they’re trying out the OS on whatever cheap phones MVNOs like Straight Talk happen to have in stock.
What Google can do about it
As pessimistic as all of this sounds, I don’t think Android is completely without hope in the US. The iMessage situation remains troublesome, but largely speaking, it’s out of Google’s hands. Between thecompany’s PR campaigncentered around RCS and itsrecent actions to persuade the European Commisionto level the playing field, everything else is a waiting game.
What Google — and Samsung, and other, smaller Android manufacturers — can do, though, is attempt to meet younger audiences on their level. It’s a dangerous strategy, one that can all too easily lead into “how do you do, fellow kids?” territory. But by shaking up the game plan, it could be possible for Android to stop bleeding users.
Embrace customization
The 2013 Moto X was completely customizable.
Dig into anymarket research surrounding Gen Zand you’ll find the same type of messaging used over and over again. Today, younger users care about individuality and standing out from the crowd. Consider how many iPhones you see in restaurants, on trains, at concerts. Marketing devices from Samsung or Google as alternatives is a good start, but it’s far from enough.
Instead, OEMs bringing back something like Moto Maker, a tool that allowed shoppers to completely customize nearly every aspect of their hardware, could prove worthwhile. Mixing and matching colors and materials would allow buyers to stand out from the crowd. Companies like Microsoft have pulled this off with custom gaming controllers, withSamsung’s Bespoke Edition series comes closestin the smartphone realm. It’s not enough, though — to succeed here, you’d need a broad range of options available for something as popular as the Galaxy S24 series is likely to be.
Android manufacturers embracing foldables is also a great start. Unique form factors you won’t find running iOS are growing more popular in the US by the day, thanks to anall-new selection of great foldablesthat didn’t exist last year. On the marketing side, I actually thinkSamsung’s recent ad campaignsfor the Galaxy Z Flip 5 is a solid example of pulling this off. If the company canstop resting while it’s ahead and get back to innovating, it’s easy to imagine a world where clamshell devices start winning over a select group of younger audiences.
Long story short, customization and unique experiences are, without a doubt, the heart of Android. Lean into it.
Go green, and prove it
Teenagers and young adults are alsofar more eco-conscious than other buyers. We’ve seen plenty of posturing from Google and Samsung about their dedication to a green future, but no one’s quite put their money where their mouth is like Apple. As overblown as theApple Watch Series 9’s"carbon-neutral" status might be, it’s clear the brand won mindshare aftercasting Octavia Spencer as Mother Nature, in a skit that, as of this publication, has garnered 4.3 million views on YouTube. Call it cringe if you want, but the marketing worked.
Though Google and Samsung have made promises on their respective progress in making carbon-neutral products, the truth is many of the moves made towards an eco-friendly future have been focused on benefiting the bottom line. No one really thinks removing the charger from the box is helping to save the environment, nor willwatching ads for charitymake a dent in the steps necessary to slow climate change. These brands need to outplay Apple in this space, period, and it shouldn’t all be onFairphone’s shoulders.
Make Apple lame
Personally, though, I think there’s an even easier way to win back the hearts and minds of, at the very least,someteenagers, and — bonus — it’s a tried-and-true method. Samsung and Google need to position Apple as the brand relied on by parents above all else. In the same way teenagers left behind social networks like Facebook, iOS needs to be seen as a platform populated by the exact crowd they’re trying to rebel against.
That’s easier said than done, of course, and risks falling into the same pitfalls previous ad campaigns have found. It’s not nearly as easy as playing an ad full of senior citizens using the iPhone 15 Pro during the Super Bowl — it’s a mood that needs to build momentum organically. But if you can make iMessage and FaceTime feellame, that status could go a long way in changing these dangerous tailwinds. Children have always pushed back on their parents' lifestyles, whether through music, culture, or hobbies. Why couldn’t that apply to iOS?
Android’s precarious future remains uncertain
None of these trends are new problems — dig through enough of these biannual studies, and you’ll find Apple’s numbers consistently high across the board. I had toturn back to the April 2013 reportto find iPhone market share for teens below 50 percent. That’s so long ago, it was just two months before I graduated from high school myself. I watched as dozens of friends from both high school and college ditched Android for iOS, in large part thanks to the exact concerns still affecting the platform a decade later.
Google’s lack of ambition to address these concerns head on — along with time wasted on failed iMessage competitors — has placed the entire Android ecosystem in a poor position as a new generation comes of age. It’s going to require swift action, inventive thinking, and a whole lot of luck to turn it around. Regardless of whether companies like Google and Samsung pull it off, I don’t think we’ll be waiting another decade to find out.
