Jon,

Good thoughts on younger students with high disposal income. I guess I
passed those young and fun years. 

I got those numbers from Google Analytics. It detects (not 100%) per
devices and browsers. I didn't even bother look at browsers this time.
As you mentioned those numbers are not concrete, but it gives me some
idea to reflect on our mobile users and plan for the future. We have
developed iOS app two years ago, but I am tinkering an idea of
developing Android App. I might be biased because I have an Android
device and very very small disposable income. :)

Sarah



-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Jon Gorman
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 3:39 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Mobile device usage (iOS vs. Android)

> Any thought?

I guess I'd be somewhat wary of comparing general trends to a more
defined population.  I'm guessing your campus population is not typical
of the national population, instead probably skewed towards a younger
population with higher disposable income (and also perhaps more
sensitive to peer pressure) and hence might not follow general trends
;).

Also, how is your 70% traffic figured?  Do you have any way to determine
if perhaps a few outliers are creating a significant amount of traffic.
(In other words, do you know if the mobile traffic actually represents
ownership, or might there be a smaller group of i-phone users who happen
to use the library services more? I'd guess the smaller the population
accessing via mobile, the more likely a small population could skew the
results)

Also, how are you measuring the Android users?  Is it possible you're
missing some who would be using non-default browsers or browsers
modified by a carrier?

I don't unfortunately have any stats, but I do seem to remember seeing
some numbers locally that would indicate iOS count of web usage is still
pretty high. Android phones are becoming very, very cheap but data plans
aren't.  Also, the form factor and the processing power of some of the
cheaper androids make web searching less than thrilling.
I could see someone using an Android that they get for free, but not
accessing the library for a variety of reasons.

It would be interesting if one could compare the usage of different
Android devices but the difficulty of data collection here might be
enormous. (I'm not sure off hand if there's an easy way to distinguish,
say, a Samsung Galaxy 2 from a Optimus)

Jon Gorman