Report: iOS loyalty set to overtake Android loyalty soon

Chances are good that, if you’re reading this, you are loyal to Android (this is Android Authority, after all). If so, you are not alone: according to new data from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), Android has a loyalty rate of a whopping 92 percent.

To be clear, that means of surveyed individuals who purchased a new phone in the past quarter, over 92 percent of people who owned an Android phone bought themselves another Android phone.

Those “Android loyal” folks have likely been loyal for years, as Android loyalty has remained above 90 percent since 2017.

On the flip side, iOS loyalty has historically been lower. However, you can see from the chart below that iOS loyalty has been steadily climbing, and could meet or even overtake Android very soon:

It’s not hard to see why someone would be loyal to an OS, regardless of which one. Learning a new OS takes a lot of time and effort, and even if an individual is fed up with an operating system and would want to switch, the hassle of doing so might persuade them to just tough it out.

There’s also the concept of integration within an ecosystem, something which Apple does exceptionally well. In other words, if someone wants to switch from iOS to Android they would probably be less likely to do so if they also own a MacBook, an iPad, an Apple TV box, etc. since all the devices “play nice” together. Getting an Android phone would likely cause more inconvenience than anything else, in that situation.

As such, going forward, we could see folks switching from one OS to another even less frequently as both Android and iOS become integrated into all facets of people’s lives.

What do you think? Would you ever switch from one OS to another in the future, or are you now permanently loyal to Android (or iOS)? Let us know in the comments.

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