Personally, I don't understand why people buy iPhones. If you're in the US, I can understand the texting and video calls lock-in, but even then, I'd buy an Android just because I'd refuse to be a hostage to Apple's services, and I'd wear that green badge with pride.
Furthermore, paying the price of the latest iPhone Pro (or Samsung S Ultra for that matter) is ridiculous and is only acceptable to people with high prices on their contracts. Much like what US people are going through — i.e., if you're paying $100+ on a mobile plan, might as well throw an iPhone in the mix to sweeten the deal. But on my 5 EUR unlimited data plan, me and others do not want an expensive phone included and prefer to pay for that phone up front.
I also prefer to up front whenever possible and never had a phone paid by contract.
I buy an iPhone preferably used and use it until major OS updates are no longer available. I currently use an iPhone XR from 2018.
I think that long term with iPhone it’s cheaper than doing the same with Android unless you go with really budget ones like 150 €, but that’s to bad of an experience for me.
What I also really like with iPhone is that you can get really cheap displays and batteries which is not the case for Android phones in my experience.
Think about what you're saying here: the signal of someone being an Android user instead of an iOS one means they're willing to sacrifice their own user experience for (not that much) money and being tied to Google.
As a company do you want people like that as your customer?
Tesco is a low-mid end supermarket chain in the UK, so this is kind of irrelevant as they need to hit everyone, but in such circumstances people should not complain if the UX sucks on their device because they were excessively cheap, and yet, of course, they do. The truth is the numbers in the article are unacceptably slow across the board.
You can have alternative app stores, you can download torrents on it and then play them with VLC, you can have the actual Firefox browser and even Chrome clones (e.g., Brave) are more capable than iOS Safari web views. You can have an email client that works locally (K-9 Mail). Android has had usable PWA support for years. The most popular chat app, WhatsApp, is not Google's app. Samsung phones don't even push people into many of Google's apps, shipping with Samsung's own launcher, Calendar, Notes, Camera, Gallery, etc., and it even has their own apps store in addition to Google Play. And AOSP, the open-source distribution, is actually usable even without Google's Play Services, which has spawned distributions such as LineageOS breathing life into old devices.
I'm an Android user, and except for the Play App Store and Google Maps, I don't use any other apps from Google and that hasn't happened due to some attempt for "degoogling". Even the app that syncs my CalDAV/CardDAV accounts is not developed by Google (on Android this isn't native, but that's completely fine).
I don't understand why many iPhone users resort to such mental gymnastics to justify an expensive device that's being rented from Apple.
And yes, as an app developer, you want Android users because Android (and its allies, like WhatsApp) are actually winning in the marketplace. Providing clients for all people is how WhatsApp came to dominate the landscape. This is why Apple is so reluctant to give up on their nefarious practices related to their App Store or the restrictions they place on developers, continuously trying to undermine the EU's DMA because they know they only have a short window during which they can milk the user base.
Personally, I don't understand why people buy iPhones. If you're in the US, I can understand the texting and video calls lock-in, but even then, I'd buy an Android just because I'd refuse to be a hostage to Apple's services, and I'd wear that green badge with pride.
Furthermore, paying the price of the latest iPhone Pro (or Samsung S Ultra for that matter) is ridiculous and is only acceptable to people with high prices on their contracts. Much like what US people are going through — i.e., if you're paying $100+ on a mobile plan, might as well throw an iPhone in the mix to sweeten the deal. But on my 5 EUR unlimited data plan, me and others do not want an expensive phone included and prefer to pay for that phone up front.