Introduction
Android vs iOS, they’re one of the biggest battles of the 21st century. You may notice this daily by people arguing which phone is the best. I have wondered, however, does this split the same across different genders? Does one gender prefer one phone more than another? I predicted that if you are female, then you are more likely to own an iPhone. I also wondered whether the type of phone used is related to the tech savviness of the owner.
I’m interested in the topic because, from my observation, I noticed that females tend to use iOS devices than males, whom I observed tend to use Android more. I am also interested whether this also has anything to do with the tech savviness of the user, and whether men are better at technology than women. But all of those are just my observations, I need some data so I can say something for sure.
Background
Mobile phones are an integral part of today’s society. Today, there are two main operating systems that ran on smartphones: there’s Android, which is used by nearly all smartphone companies and iOS, which is used by Apple to power their iPhones. Many people have strong preferences on one platform over the other, and many people try to defend their decision and argue with each other to which phone is the best.
However, this raises a question, does this split is the same across different genders, or is there a difference in platform preferences across different genders? We often associate certain things with certain gender, for example, the pink colour is often associated with females. so I am curious whether certain phones are more preferred by certain genders or not.
Hypothesis
I have predicted that if you are female, then you are more likely to have an iPhone.
The research will contain both qualitative and quantitative data. The quantitative data will generally be something like the operating system of the phone (eg. iOS or Android) while qualitative data will be why people choose iOS or Android.
Constraints
There are some constraints and limitations while doing this research. This mainly affects the primary data but also the secondary data to some extent. Here are the constraints:
- Limited time: The time given to this research is very limited. Only 2.5 months is given to collect, process and analyse the data. The actual time spent on this research is less than that as I also have other school work to do. This is probably the biggest constraint as it affects many other aspects, such as sample size.
- Cost: The research aims to spend as little money as possible. However, this results in lower quality data, especially secondary data as many of the datasets are locked behind a paywall.
- Limited sample size: Due to limited time described above, only a small amount of people were able to be surveyed, this will affect the accuracy of the primary data. By comparison, surveys from secondary data usually have thousands of participants, increasing the accuracy of the data.
- Lack of variety in the dataset: The primary data only surveys students from Wellington SC, which is a small subset of people living in Melbourne metro area. In contrast, secondary data covers a much larger geographical area over a wider range of age. However, while secondary datasets cover larger age range, almost none of them cover people under the age of 18. This will make comparison between the two data more difficult as one age group may not be representative of the other.
- Level of expertise: While every effort has been made to give the best analysis possible, please note that I am not an expert in the field.
Methodology
For this research, I collected the data from primary and secondary sources. Primary data is collected through surveys while secondary data is collected from datasets found on the internet.
The survey will cover students within Wellington Secondary College, which are aged between 12 to 20. It is likely that the students live in south-eastern Melbourne. The survey will not cover the following:
- Students outside Wellington Secondary College
- People who are above 18 years old
- Laptops, desktops, tablets or any devices that aren’t a smartphone
The survey can either be done online using Google Forms or on paper, whichever the participant prefers. If you want to participate the survey online, you can do so here. If you prefer to do it online, you can download and print the paper form here.
For secondary data, care has been taken to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of the data. Due to the rapidly changing nature of the data, I only consider datasets from the past five years, as anything older than that is not very relevant to today’s situations. Furthermore, I focused on data from the US and other western countries as they are demographically and culturally similar to Australia.
To see all of the findings from secondary data, see the secondary data page page.