> And that still doesn’t negate my other point, if you exclude iOS, you miss the most affluent users. Who do you think is the most profitable market segment? People buying $50 Android phones or people buying $700 iPhones?
If your service is free and you monetize by selling users' data, they're all the same. You don't have to sell things to your users to make money. Just look at Google!
> Again, if I’m writing a website for the US, why do I care about the worldwide market share?
Again, the world is not the US. If I'm making a website for Europe or China [1] or South Korea [2] or Vietnam [3], why do I care about the US or Japan market share?
If your service is free and you monetize by selling users' data, they're all the same. You don't have to sell things to your users to make money. Just look at Google!
Because users in the rest of the world who are not as affluent aren’t as attractive to advertisers. You are already seeing it with Google. Google just announced a year over year decline in net income as ad sales increased a lot slower than acquisition costs.
Google doesn’t “sell users data” it sells access to users to advertisers based on their data. Advertisers aren’t willing to pay as much for users data for much less affluent users
Again, the world is not the US. If I'm making a website for Europe or China [1] or South Korea [2] or Vietnam [3], why do I care about the US or Japan market share?
If you combine South Korea and Vietnam you probably have the GDP of a midsize state in the US. In China, if you want to reach the growing middle and upper class - you still have to support iOS.
If your service is free and you monetize by selling users' data, they're all the same. You don't have to sell things to your users to make money. Just look at Google!
> Again, if I’m writing a website for the US, why do I care about the worldwide market share?
Again, the world is not the US. If I'm making a website for Europe or China [1] or South Korea [2] or Vietnam [3], why do I care about the US or Japan market share?
[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/china
[2] http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/south-korea
[3] http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/vietnam