The iPhone and Western World Domination? 12 Reasons why it's Inevitable...

I'd been swimming against the tide for well over a decade. Making my name writing about Symbian OS on the Nokia phones, then the Apple iPhone appeared in 2007 in fledgling but notable form and Android phones started appearing a year or two later. Symbian was dominant for a while still and then the American juggernauts took over, with Symbian being relegated to irrelevance by 2013. 

Not to worry, I had Nokia's new love, Windows Phone, to play with and write about, eh? This was something of a flash in the pan, disappearing after just a few years thanks to Nokia's lack of investment in the high end and the industry's indifference to the platform in general. 

Android seemed the obvious choice for me, because of its tech credentials, and I went through several Samsungs and Pixels, until in 2019 a friend (literally) bought me an iPhone 11 Pro because he'd been so impressed by it and thought I would too - he wanted me to cover iOS more in my videos and podcasts. And he was right.

Apple had been improving and refining the iPhone year on year, catching up with the Nokias and Samsungs of this world in imaging, media, displays - and then surpassing them almost across the board. Six months later, after much testing, I switched my main SIM into that iPhone (I still have it in a drawer) and I've been mostly iPhone-first ever since. 

Yes, I really enjoy dabbling with Android flagships and curiosities, especially when doing reviews, but as my primary, I went 11 Pro, then 12 Pro Max - and then to my current, the 14 Pro Max (which I still think is better than the 15 Pro Max in some important ways).

Now, my wife and daughter have been using iPhones for a decade now. I live in the UK, and around 80% of the phones I see in town centres, in pubs, on the trains, are Apple iPhones. And that percentage is still rising according to market data.

I appreciate that in many countries (especially South America and much of Asia) Android is culturally dominant (historically due to price), but I wanted to address here all the reasons why, in the UK, in the USA, and across much of Europe, the iPhone is all-conquering. Some of the reasons have been built into iOS since the start, others have emerged along the way. But taken as a whole, the tidal wave of 'iPhone' shows no sign of receding.

Some notes:

• The reasons below aren't geeky reasons on the whole - I'm not nit picking with tech knowledge. There are some other reasons that I care about because I am a geek (ProRAW imaging on the 'Pro' iPhones, Qi charging across the range, better media editing, etc.), but which most iPhone owners wouldn't know or give a fig about.
• I'm NOT saying that iOS is 'better' than Android - it is in some ways, but worse in others, plus there are variations in hardware to consider on the iPhone front and truly massive variation on the Android side.

1. iMessage

Starting with the obvious - media compatibility with iPhone-owning friends via iMessage, regardless of whether they have WhatsApp or similar also installed. So owners don't have to worry about attaching a photo or video, it will always appear as intended. 

* in fairness, Apple has pledged to support RCS in 2024, so media will make its way to Android phones with latest software by the end of the year. Which will largely level the playing field here.

2. Pricing

One big reason for the dominance of iPhones in the West has traditionally been that the USA, UK, etc are more affluent (yes, despite [spit] Brexit). While this is still partly true, iPhones have been available for so long now and are supported for so long by Apple in software, that many people's first iPhone is second hand. From a friend, from eBay, from CeX, and so on. 

Anecdotally, to back this up, our family's last six iPhones (my 12 Pro Max and then 14 Pro Max, my daughter's 11 Pro and 12 Pro, my wife's iPhone 11 and then 12) have all been bought by me second hand on various forums and shops. Why pay Apple's full RRP when you can wait six months and pick up the same phone in mint condition for 70% the cost?

So iPhones are now - largely - as affordable as the best Android devices. Cost isn't really a factor anymore, I contend.

3. Security

Having lived with every OS over the last 30 years (literally), I have a pretty good understanding of keeping regular folk safe and secure, ever more important now that so much of our lives is both online and managed from the phone. 

As such, I've enormously impressed by Apple's speed of response to vulnerabilities discovered in the OS and in the Safari browser. Within a day or two, usually, the appropriate update is offered to every iPhone in the world. At the same time. 

Although regular folk rarely appreciate how important this is, it gives me peace of mind that my iPhone-owning friends and family will at least get prompted to install these updates and, when they ignore them, often have them auto-installed overnight anyway. 

(In contrast, Android phones, even flagships, usually have to wait a month or so before OS fixes roll out, and even then only for specific phones from the last two to five years. The situation's getting better in Android land, but it's still some way behind iOS and iPhones.)

4. Restoration

It's every regular phone owner's worry - what happens when the phone is broken or lost or just so old that it needs replacing? 

And it's here that Apple took a leaf out of Palm's book. Back in the day with a PalmPilot PDA, you just plonked your device in its cradle and pressed the sync button and it was back exactly where you left off on an older/different PDA. Aside from not having a sync cradle, the idea is the same with iPhones. Between iCloud and/or PC/Mac backups, it's fairly trivial, on a new iPhone, to get back 99.9% of where you were. 

(There's the slight caveat that to get truly everything, most users will have at some point been prompted to expand their iCloud allocations from the default 5GB, for the various data backups. This will be £8 or so a year for most people, so not expensive, though multiply this by a few billion iPhones and you can see yet another way Apple gets so bl**dy rich!)

Most passwords are stored in the Apple Keychain, so usually it's just a handful of third party app and service passwords to re-enter, or a few 2 factor verification codes to auto-paste in (iOS does this for you, presenting code for pasting above the keyboard, handily). All that usually remain are some app passwords to retype, plus authorising online banking, etc.

Which is a major boon that normal users can understand - and welcome with open arms. I know geeks like me (and possibly you reading this!) quite enjoy setting up a new phone from scratch, but it's anathema for most people.

In contrast, although the restoration/transfer process between Google Pixels, Samsungs, Motos, and so on is getting better year, on year, it's not foolproof, not 100% reliable, and you don't get everything back on the new device as is. Not yet.

5. Less for users to mess up

By which I don't mean the hardware. Although iPhones are, generally speaking, more physically robust than the average phone. I'm talking about the OS, settings, and applications here. 

Under the hood there are just as many settings to get wrong as on Android phones, but the homescreen system does impose a certain order to application icons, and this helps regular folk a lot. 

I've talked to dozens of friends, family, and customers about their phones (usually in the course of helping them in some way) and been shown their set-up. On iOS I've usually been somewhat amazed that they live with icons in completely random order, usually by installation date, though they claim that they simply 'remember' where each one is. But on Android, chaos is on a whole other level. I routinely see user homescreen set-ups with just a handful of icons randomly scattered across each of five or six home screens - when I suggest that I move them all onto just the one, the users' jaws drop ("I didn't know that was possible!", etc.)

In short, I contend that Apple's somewhat rigid homescreen layouts (now including basic widgets, which is good) mean that non-geeks don't get themselves into too much trouble - heck, they might even work out how to put app icons in folders and finally get organised...

6. Less chance that things will go mysteriously wrong

As I write this, I'm battling an Android mystery. A core service/app is misbehaving and it's not obvious whether it's down to Google to fix, the phone manufacturer to fix, or the user to fix by fiddling around, or even wiping and starting again. Very frustrating. Well, fun for uber-geeks, but mystifying for the average consumer.

In contrast, Apple's vertical approach (i.e. they do the OS and the hardware and no third parties are involved) means that if there really is an issue (and lots of people will be affected because of the platform's popularity and commonality) then Apple will address and fix it. Because they're 100% responsible.

7. Ecosystem market lead

Apple, Google, Samsung, OnePlus, the list goes on - every phone manufacturer is trying to carve out numbers for its own ecosystem. So 'Buy our phone, then our headphones, then our watch, our tablet our home automation solution, then our cloud storage', and so on. But Apple is by far the market leader here, so the ecosystem concept is easiest to demonstrate. 

When buying accessories, compatibility with iPhones is the highest profile level. And starting with Apple's own kit means (literally) zero setup hassles. Which is why we've ended up with multiple family iPads, multiple family AirPods, various MagSafe pads and power banks, an Apple Watch, and - of course - an Apple Mac. 

Between all the Apple ecosystem computing devices, text and media are shared to each others clipboard wirelessly, and file sharing is trivial via AirDrop (using Wifi Direct). 

I realise all this sounds like I've been drinking the Apple kool-aid, but it really all does work well together. And yes, Google stuff works together to some degree, ditto Samsung, but I'd argue not as all pervasively.

8. Better speaker sound

Now this is a bit niche and a little tech, but bear with me. I love watching Netflix and YouTube etc in odd moments, 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there, wherever I happen to be, and often (e.g. eating lunch, while cooking, in the car) it's convenient to use the phone's speakers rather than messing around with headphones and/or blocking out the world around me. 

I don't think I'm alone, either, which is why phone speakers have become both stereo and also a lot better in recent years - it's a valid plus point for most models.

And the reason why I mention all this in a 'platform' piece is that Apple does something with digital sound that I've only seen a handful of times in the Android world - sounds below about 100Hz are octave shifted (i.e. their frequencies are doubled) by the OS. In practice this means that bass notes in music that would otherwise be inaudible on tiny phone speakers (because 'physics') are shifted from, say, 60Hz to 120Hz, meaning that they still sound in 'tune' with the rest of the music but they actually be heard. 

OK, so you're not hearing the original deep rumbling (perhaps 20Hz) bass that the artist intended (they'd be horrified that you're hearing their music on phone speakers anyway!), but it's a lot better than not hearing any bass at all!

This bass octave shifting applies to all iPhones and makes music and soundtrack audio richer and 'punchier', in my experience. 

9. Better resale value

Like it or not, market data shows higher resale prices for Apple iPhones compared to the equivalent Google or Samsung devices, measured in percentage of the original RRP that you can sell a device for after a year of use, in mint condition.

So, for example, using data from CeX in the UK, a one year old iPhone 14 Pro Max can be sold for 72% its original price, while a similar age mint Pixel 7 Pro will raise around 61%. You can check for yourselves, on CeX or eBay. iPhones aren't quite an investment per se, but they lose less money than even the best thought of Android devices.

Better resale value is good when upgrading, of course, because you get more for your old phone to help buy the new one. It all helps.

10. Better repair facilities

There will be a point where even you as the careful phone owner damage a phone, and that's when you might well call the appropriate service line and get it booked in for a repair (screen, battery, back, whatever), either in or out of warranty (hopefully in, as otherwise you're in for a potential financial shock). 

Again, while the likes of Google and Samsung have got better at handling repairs, all via mail-in and return systems, it's a huge, massive fillip to regular users (who are more likely to damage their tech) that most major cities in most UK, USA, and other Western countries have Apple Stores. 

I've done two phone repairs through my local Apple Store, in Reading, about 3 miles away. I booked in via the web, turned up and handed over the phone and, an hour later, picked up the repaired device and simply drove home.

Running these stores costs a fortune, of course, which is why only a company the size of Apple could do this. And it also partly explains the high prices of Apple kit - repair facilities at its stores are built into the bottom line and retail prices.

11. Longer support

Although most folk don't really get excited about OS and security updates (mentioned above, in terms of speed of response), they certainly do complain if they see new advertised features that aren't coming to their phones. 

And this is where Apple has been impressive by any metrics, keeping OS updates going to even six year old iPhones. So, for example, if someone has an iPhone Xs, from September 2018, which launched on iOS 12, then they'll have been offered iOS 17 at launch and will be on the update/security track right up to September 2024, which I make a full six years.

In the Android world - yet again - things are getting better, but only slowly. Many of the latest Samsungs and Pixels have five years support (the Pixel 8 Pro even claims 7!), but the vast majority of (non-flagship, everyday folk) models aren't supported this well. 

Still, at least the trend is upwards across the board, though with 'choosing Apple' being a safe route for non-geeks because they don't have to worry about model numbers and Googling manufacturer promises, they just know that they'll be looked after for a long, long time. Long enough that the iPhone in question will be onto its new owner - or even the one after that, via the second hand market, or family hand-down scheme(!)

12. More reliable snaps

So much manufacturer marketing for smartphones now revolves around the cameras, especially looking at zoom. To the point where even geeks are starting to zone out when companies drone on about phone camera gimmicks.

What matter to regular phone users are whether their snaps are good or... blurry or... of the wrong subject. Which is where the iPhone Camera software (and imaging pipeline under the hood) scores big - I've tested every phone camera since the earliest Nokias and have a lot of experience here. 

When Apple's Camera software is running, it's constantly reading the sensor and anticipating your tapping of the shutter button on-screen. What this means in practice is that there's zero shutter lag. So what you see centred in the viewfinder at a particular moment is exactly what you'll capture. Not what's happening in a tenth of a second's time, or longer as on many other phone systems. All this makes a big difference when snapping people or pets, I've found.

Sprinkle in intelligence in taking multiple images and combining or rejecting them as needed to provide something with good detail, colours, and contrast, and you can see why the iPhone Camera is appreciated by normal folk. Heck, I use it myself to great effect with our family and pets.

Zoom cameras are the latest 'breakthrough' in phone imaging and can often be surprisingly good, at least in good light and with relatively static subjects. While loving this as a geek, in the Pixel 8 Pro and Galaxy S23 Ultra, for example, I still contend that most people rarely zoom over about 3x for 'normal'/everyday photos. So an iPhone with, say, a routine 3x telephoto, is perfectly good enough for 99% of shots and users.

Last words

Reading all this back, I appreciate that it does seem as though Apple is sponsoring this blog or bribing me in some way. They're not. I'm simply approaching the 2023 phone from the point of view of a Western 'normal' (non-geeky) user and - hopefully - explaining the market data that we're seeing in terms of smartphone OS market share.

In fact, while doing the above analysis I haven't even mentioned potentially huge factors like Face ID (reliable and adaptive versus less reliable and regularly/forcibly retrained fingerprint sensors on all Android devices) or application and game quality (where titles come out on iOS first and are usually implemented better). 

Anyway, if your family all use iPhones but you've been resisting then you have at least a dozen items of food for thought!

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