Android Archives - Page 2 of 2

By JC Torres

What Microsoft feared nearly a decade ago has come true. The mobile market has become a two-horse race, with just some extras on the sidelines. With only Android and iOS really to choose from, who do you think has more loyal users? Apple is often cited for having fiercely loyal fans but, surprisingly enough, for the first time, Android loyalty has exceeded iOS 91% to 88%, respectively. But before either camp brings out the champagne or the pitchforks, one really has to ask: does it matter at all?

What happened?

To be clear, nothing really happened. The Consumer Intelligence Research Partners’ (CIRP) study shows that customer loyalty to either Android or iOS has been steadily on the rise. Except for a dip in iOS retention in late 2014. Perhaps if not for that temporary decline, iOS would have overtaken Android with that exact same growth rate.

And before Android users celebrate, CIRP co-founder Josh Lowitz has some insights that put that victory in a less impressive light. There are more Android users than iOS ones, that much is a fact. But to keep the iOS line growing stead, that would require an influx of more Android users switching to iOS. In contrast, Android needs less iOS refugees to keep its rate up. In other words, Android may have the higher numbers, but it may also have more people moving to iOS than the other way around.

For businesses

So what is all this Android vs iOS loyalty all about and does it even matter. For the businesses running or banking on Android or iOS, that’s a resounding yes. That means a big yes for Google, Apple, Samsung, and other Android OEMs. Brand loyalty means that people will keep using their products longer. That means, in a sense, locking them a lot longer into your services. That ultimately means making more money, or at least a steady influx of money.

Brand loyalty and customer retention are why companies work so hard to not only keep their current customers happy but to also convince those from the other side to jump ship. That last part is what sometimes causes tension, confusion, and sometimes even lawsuits, when companies fight and sometimes defame each other in order to pull their customers from other their grasp. In the Android versus iOS context, that usually involves things like saying how insecure one platform is or how closed off the other is.

For users

For users, however, brand loyalty is really nothing more than a badge, pretty much like sports team loyalty. Sometimes just as passionate, zealous, or even violent. It gives a sense of belonging or kinship to a group with similar interests and experiences. In practical terms, however, it matters very little.

iOS users are loyal to the iPhone because they don’t exactly have any other hardware to choose from. If someone else starts making iOS phones, especially better than Apple, you’ll see that iPhone loyalty wane instantly. Likewise, not all Android users are loyal to Android because of Android. Often they’re loyal to Pixels, Samsungs, LGs, Xiaomis, and the like. Often they might even be loyal to the brand of Android they only know from their OEM, not realizing how different Android might be from other OEMs.

Of course, there are those that are loyal to iOS or Android for the very platforms themselves. They agree with this or that way of doing things, of presenting things, of designing things. But then comes along a new version of iOS or Android that turns things around or yanks out those favorite features. Then you hear gnashing and weeping and the door slamming on the way out.

And then there are those who couldn’t care less about iOS or Android or Windows or Mac. It just so happens that the app they fell in love with or grew up with is only available in one particular OS. And when some of those become available in other operating systems, then the operating system becomes even less relevant. Then again, they might have become loyal to the app in the same way.

Blind loyalty

So what does brand loyalty bring? In this particular context, nothing relevant to users other than bragging rights. Indirectly, they do bring benefits, since consumer retention helps companies, which, in turn, retains or improves services that benefit users.

But not all those services are ultimately tied to those two platforms anyway. Brand loyalty, in fact, can actually become more harmful in some cases when they force users into a box of their own making. Some may never consider or use this or that app because it’s not made by this or that brand. Some won’t try out other phones because they’re too set in the ways of their old brands. Some would even go as far as admit that this or that OS is better but they’re not going to use it because it’s not iOS or Android.

Wrap-up: Breaking down barriers

We live in a world where the Internet has made the world a smaller place, where development happens at breakneck speeds, where features come and go, almost with no complete assurance they’ll be there in the next version. We live in an age that sticking to a brand just because of that brand no longer makes a lot of sense.

Of course, there will be the argument that so and so brand is synonymous with quality. As can be proven so many times, that is only true for so long. There’s no denying the fact that one brand, one platform, one app, will have better features and aspects than the others. But to equate those features to a brand and equate it for the long-term? Not exactly a sensible outlook.

Brand loyalty and customer retention are important for the companies that make these products, so hooray to the Googles, the Apples, and the Samsungs of the world. Those numbers, however, aren’t always representative of the actual quality of their products. More of then than not, it’s more representative of how good their marketing is.

By JC Torres

Sourced from SLASH GEAR

By Keith Collins

Many people realize that smartphones track their locations. But what if you actively turn off location services, haven’t used any apps, and haven’t even inserted a carrier SIM card?

Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to Google when they’re connected to the internet, a Quartz investigation has revealed.

Since the beginning of 2017, Android phones have been collecting the addresses of nearby cellular towers—even when location services are disabled—and sending that data back to Google. The result is that Google, the unit of Alphabet behind Android, has access to data about individuals’ locations and their movements that go far beyond a reasonable consumer expectation of privacy.

Quartz observed the data collection occur and contacted Google, which confirmed the practice.

The cell tower addresses have been included in information sent to the system Google uses to manage push notifications and messages on Android phones for the past 11 months, according to a Google spokesperson. They were never used or stored, the spokesperson said, and the company is now taking steps to end the practice after being contacted by Quartz. By the end of November, the company said, Android phones will no longer send cell-tower location data to Google, at least as part of this particular service, which consumers cannot disable.

“In January of this year, we began looking into using Cell ID codes as an additional signal to further improve the speed and performance of message delivery,” the Google spokesperson said in an email. “However, we never incorporated Cell ID into our network sync system, so that data was immediately discarded, and we updated it to no longer request Cell ID.”

A cell-tower location sent to Google from an Android device. (Obtained by Quartz)

It is not clear how cell-tower addresses, transmitted as a data string that identifies a specific cell tower, could have been used to improve message delivery. But the privacy implications of the covert location-sharing practice are plain. While information about a single cell tower can only offer an approximation of where a mobile device actually is, multiple towers can be used to triangulate its location to within about a quarter-mile radius, or to a more exact pinpoint in urban areas, where cell towers are closer together.

The practice is troubling for people who’d prefer they weren’t tracked, especially for those such as law-enforcement officials or victims of domestic abuse who turn off location services thinking they’re fully concealing their whereabouts. Although the data sent to Google is encrypted, it could potentially be sent to a third party if the phone had been compromised with spyware or other methods of hacking. Each phone has a unique ID number, with which the location data can be associated.

The revelation comes as Google and other internet companies are under fire from lawmakers and regulators, including for the extent to which they vacuum up data about users. Such personal data, ranging from users’ political views to their purchase histories to their locations, are foundational to the business successes of companies like Facebook and Alphabet, built on targeted advertising and personalization and together valued at over $1.2 trillion by investors.

Cell-tower locations collected and sent to Google from an Android phone with location services turned off and carried in Washington, DC. (Obtained by Quartz)

The location-sharing practice does not appear to be limited to any particular type of Android phone or tablet; Google was apparently collecting cell tower data from all modern Android devices before being contacted by Quartz. A source familiar with the matter said the cell tower addresses were being sent to Google after a change in early 2017 to the Firebase Cloud Messaging service, which is owned by Google and runs on Android phones by default.

Even devices that had been reset to factory default settings and apps, with location services disabled, were observed by Quartz sending nearby cell-tower addresses to Google. Devices with a cellular data or WiFi connection appear to send the data to Google each time they come within range of a new cell tower. When Android devices are connected to a WiFi network, they will send the tower addresses to Google even if they don’t have SIM cards installed.

“It has pretty concerning implications,” said Bill Budington, a software engineer who works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for digital privacy. “You can kind of envision any number of circumstances where that could be extremely sensitive information that puts a person at risk.”

The section of Google’s privacy policy that covers location sharing says the company will collect location information from devices that use its services, but does not indicate whether it will collect data from Android devices when location services are disabled:

When you use Google services, we may collect and process information about your actual location. We use various technologies to determine location, including IP address, GPS, and other sensors that may, for example, provide Google with information on nearby devices, Wi-Fi access points and cell towers.

According to the Google spokesperson, the company’s system that controls its push notifications and messages is “distinctly separate from Location Services, which provide a device’s location to apps.” Android devices never offered consumers a way to opt out of the collection of cell tower data.

“It is really a mystery as to why this is not optional,” said Matthew Hickey, a security expert and researcher at Hacker House, a security firm based in London. “It seems quite intrusive for Google to be collecting such information that is only relevant to carrier networks when there are no SIM card or enabled services.”

While Google says it doesn’t use the location data it collects using this service, its does allow advertisers to target consumers using location data, an approach that has obvious commercial value. The company can tell using precise location tracking, for example, whether an individual with an Android phone or running Google apps has set foot in a specific store, and use that to target the advertising a user subsequently sees.