At a time when tech giants Google and Apple have already been facing severe backlash over their alleged market monopoly, which they practice by pushing down apps from other developers, and giving priority to their own products, a new study, which is reportedly backed by a social media platform, is working to add fuel to the fire. A new Facebook-backed study claims that the default apps by Google and Apple dominate the key categories.
Apple Scores 15/20, Google at 12
As per the study by Comscore, 15 of the apps in the Top 20 list in iPhone, are developed by Apple. Meanwhile, Google too, takes ownership for 12 of the 20 most-used apps on Android.
Comscore spokesperson Joe Osborne has said that they have tried to delve into the “impact of preinstalled apps on the competitive app ecosystem”. This study, however, is based on a large-scale survey that was carried out by the group, where they quizzed some 4,000 people on which apps they use most frequently. This is because neither of the two phone makers between Google and Apple releases usage data for their apps, per say.
Errors and Discrepancies
While the full report has not yet come to light, the fact that the survey was carried out in November 2020, has been made known. Maybe that is why there are some bits and pieces in the information, which don’t make complete sense.
For starters, the study claims that the most frequently used app on iPhone is the Phone app (as it should be). One might expect the same to be true on Android as well, but the results show that the number of people making use of the Phone/Call app on Android, is not significant. Weird, isn’t it?
Another observation that has been made by the study claims that around 78 million iPhone users have used the Calculator app, which is greater than the number of Android users accessing Gmail. This particular conclusion has been drawn by extrapolating the findings from the survey.
Meanwhile With The App Tracking Transparency
This study is the second that has been paid for by Facebook, after it had previously funded a research into the privacy cover provided by the new App Tracking Transparency tool that has been made available by Apple on iOS 14. This particularly study has been a verbal attack of sorts on the tool, and claims that the new privacy feature is “devastating”, and will cause all “app developers, advertisers, and the ads ecosystems” to lose. The report also alleges Apple of undermining competition among apps, by preventing personalized adverts.
