For several years there has been an assumption across the industry that customers with Android devices are younger and less affluent than those with iPhones, resulting in lower transaction values and conversion.

However, analysis of customer behaviour on NN4M Android apps in 2015 shows that what you think you know about Android customers is probably wrong.

In some cases we see that conversion is actually far higher for Android users, whilst ATV is around the same.

This appears to be because historically analysts have taken into account data from all Android devices, however the majority of sessions come from only a small number of them. Our clients see over 5,250 different Android devices accessing their apps, however the top 10 devices alone account for 62.5% of all transactions. Of these devices, 9 out of 10 are Samsung.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is by far the most popular handset followed by the S6. Samsung Galaxy phones are similar to their iOS counterparts in both spec and price, so it is no longer safe to assume that Android customers are less affluent.

To put all of this in perspective, the number of Android users is still small in comparison to iOS. We expect iOS apps to be around 10-20% of total ecommerce revenue, and Android will be only about 10% of that (so 1% of total ecommerce revenue). The numbers might be small, but they are growing fast – on Black Friday last year our Android apps saw a 100% increase in revenue on the previous year.