> Android is vastly better than iOS (I use both, and using iOS always makes it feel like my hands are tied behind my back).
It's really in no sense "vastly better" the market pretty much bears this out.
From a developer/technical standpoint it can be a pain that you have less access to device features on iOS and the AppStore review process can be a nightmare. But developing on XCode isn't bad, as is the UIKit architecture. It's unfortunate that iOS isn't open source like Android, but I can see no way from a user or technical perspective that it's "vastly better".
I'd like to see citations for that. But one of the reasons could be that low end smartphones and off contract phones are far more popular in Europe. That drives the market towards cheaper devices which tend to run Android.
In any case it was the word "vastly" I was objecting to. It's possible to subjectively think Android or iOS is better but I don't see how to can make a reasoned argument that Android is objectively vastly superior (aside from the fact that it's open source which could be considered critical).
Here's some data for Japan; Apple has about 1/3 of the smartphone market, almost all of the rest is Android. There's generally little difference in device capability or pricing between iphones and non-iphones in Japan, so it's not a low-end vs. high-end thing, and two out of the three major carriers heavily push the iphone, so it's certainly not marketing....
> There's generally little difference in device capability or pricing between iphones and non-iphones in Japan
Actually Japan is probably one of the few places you could say Android phones are more capable as a lot of them have 1Seg tuners. :)
The iPhone plans in Japan also tend to me more expensive (partly due to LTE on the iPhone 5).
The situation is also slightly odd in Japan as the historically largest provider (docomo) doesn't distribute the iPhone. They are however rapidly losing customers possibly because of this:
It's really in no sense "vastly better" the market pretty much bears this out.
From a developer/technical standpoint it can be a pain that you have less access to device features on iOS and the AppStore review process can be a nightmare. But developing on XCode isn't bad, as is the UIKit architecture. It's unfortunate that iOS isn't open source like Android, but I can see no way from a user or technical perspective that it's "vastly better".