Apple and Android in the tablet market: An empirical research

The two platforms, Apple and Android, have been compared on 20 different variables addressing most of the aspects considered by consumers when purchasing a tablet that were identified in the preliminary interviews. Respondents were required to assign a score on a 9-points Likert scale with 1 indicating a bad performance and 9 a very good one.

Apple outperformed Android on 12 variables, meaning that on those dimensions it received a mean score at least half point higher than Android’s. Android outperformed Apple on only two aspects; while for six dimensions the two ecosystems’ mean scores were equal, or very similar, meaning that the difference in mean scores was lower than half point in either direction.

The means have been compared using a T-test statistic and they all are statistically significant (p value<0.01) when not otherwise specified. Apple main strengths are the intangible values of its brand, in fact it received a mean score of 7.52 on Being Trendy (1.85 more than Android), 7.88 on Being Trustworthy (1.67 higher than Android) and 7.74 on Being Desirable (1.92 greater than Android). These results confirm the insights gained from the secondary research (Phipps, 2011) and from the preliminary interviews, especially from Dario’s comment “Apple has a terrific brand”.

Usability and design are two other strengths of Apple’s tablets, which scores 7.79 on Design (1.4 more than Android). Usability is composed by Intuitive User Interface, where Apple scores 7.67 (1.28 higher than Android) and Ease of Use, whose 7.78 score is quite high when compared with Android’s 6.56. Usability results can be slightly biased by the familiarity of many users with other Apple products that share the same, or very similar, operating systems, like iPhones and iPods. However, the results are striking and their importance should not be weakened, because usability is a fundamental competitive advantage in a new and unfamiliar product category.

Another important characteristic to evaluate these ecosystems is their available offering of applications. Also in this case Apple’s scores on various indicators are much higher than Android’s. Apple received 8.12 for Quantity of Applications, 8.02 for Variety of Applications and 7.78 for Quality of Applications, while Android scored 6.59 (1.53 difference), 6.53 (1.49 difference) and 6.47 (1.32 difference) respectively.

On the other hand, participants perceived the pricing of the two ecosystems to be very similar and assigned a score of 6.61 to Android and of 6.69 to Apple (sig.=0.460). These results show Apple’s ecosystem leading position in the application market and its capability to offer more, more varied and higher quality applications. This offering comes at higher prices though; the lower score on the price component can indicate that customers are not very satisfied by the price premium charged for these applications.

Graphics and Screen Resolution are two other aspects where Apple received higher scores, although in these ones the differences were not as big as on other dimensions. On the former it received a 7.43 mean score, versus Android’s 6.60 (0.83 difference), while on the latter 7.49, versus 6.74 (0.75 difference). Apple scored higher also in relation to the Cloud Service, with 6.47 versus Android 5.80 (0.68 difference), which could be due to the roll out of the iCloud service in June 2011.