Half Sigma has a post up profiling buyers of Apple and Android (concluding that most Android buyers are more frugal than Apple buyers.)
Android buyers may be more frugal, but it’s not because they have less money to spend than Apple buyers. The reason Apple is the elite/SWPL/hipster smartphone and tablet and laptop of choice has to do with the preferences of women. As a commenter over there wrote:
“Maybe iphones appeal to women shoppers, but the sophisticated users I know prefer the Galaxy S III or the Nexus 4.”
Apple vs Android is less about SWPL vs prole than it is about women vs men.
Firstly, proles aren’t Android customers. Most proles don’t have service plans and are still using dumb phones. Android customers are well-paid STEM men, typically younger, and often married with small kids. They are the type of men who are out of the dating market, either through marriage or nerdery. They love tinkering with gadgets and discovering multi-use purposes for them. They are numbers people, and have a natural aversion to spending more for something than what it is worth according to dry calculations they make in their heads. In other words, the core Android base are left brain thinkers who better appreciate value and function and are autistic to the appeal of pretty packaging, ergonomics and intuitive GUIs.
Devoted Apple customers are single women and the men who hang around a lot of women, like salesmen, players, scenesters, and marketers. Apple customers also include older buyers who are intimidated by rumors of non-Apple products being harder to navigate. In other words, the core Apple base are right brain thinkers who better appreciate form and are scared of advanced techie functionality (or more precisely, techie functionality that is not sufficiently concealed under a soothing layer of bubbly icons).
Apple enjoys lavish profitability because women are the primary purchasers in any modern, slowly decaying Western society. Since form has higher status than function in such late-stage societies, and since women are the drivers of trivial status whoring competitions, Apple — which, justifiably, represents the ultimate in high status tech aesthetic — owns women’s sympathies. And from this, Apple owns a significant chunk of men and their dollars.
