The state of Android vs iOS usage among Facebook users

About 20.1 percent of Facebook users connect to the service on an Android device compared to 18.9 percent of users who connect with an iOS device, according to data from Optimal, Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer last week that Facebook had more users on Android than iOS. We asked social media advertising and analytics platform provider Optimal for the details. Optimal’s data shows about 189.8 million users active on Android devices -- accessing Facebook through the native app or the mobile web. About 178.3 million are active on iOS. That’s among 944.2 million monthly active users addressable with the Facebook Ads API, not the full billion announced last week. Below are the top 20 territories with the highest share of Android usage. The "Index" figure in the chart shows relative prevalence of each OS versus the population, so it compares global Android penetration to Android penetration in that country -- and does the same for iOS. Android has the highest share in South Korea, where it is used by 52.6 percent of the population versus 20.3 percent using iOS. Singapore and Australia have the highest iOS penetration, both with 48.8 percent of the population using Apple’s mobile OS. The U.S. has the highest collective penetration of Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, with 83.5 percent of the Facebook population using these devices each month. The country is among the 38 percent of territories with more iOS than Android usage. In the U.S., 44.1 percent of users are on iOS versus 39.4 on Android. The countries with the next largest population of Facebook users, Brazil and India, both use Android more than iOS, but these devices make up a smaller percentage of overall use as feature phones still dominate these markets. In Brazil, for example, Android has 11.8 percent share and iOS has 6.4 percent share. U.K. Facebook users are split 28.2 percent on iOS and 16.2 percent on Android. Facebook does not share an exact breakdown of how many users access the social network via native apps compared to the mobile web, but Zuckerberg says overall more people use the mobile web than native iOS and Android apps combined. The company has recently been working to improve its native offerings. The iOS app was updated at the end of August, focusing on speed by replacing some HTML5 with native functionality. Engadget reports today that a new native Facebook for Android app is in the final stages of testing, according to an anonymous source. Zuckerberg previously said that this was in the works, but did not offer a time frame for when it would be available. Early tests from Optimal and other advertising companies showed that clickthrough and conversion rates were higher on Android than iPhone, though costs per click and per fan were higher. Optimal says Android users took additional actions, such as viewing profile photos, Liking posts and commenting, more often than iPhone users did.

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The state of Android vs iOS usage among Facebook users

Brittany Darwell

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Brittany Darwell