The Verizon Droid, launched in November, seems to have abruptly changed Android's position in the mobile browsing market in under two months, and dramatically increased the general level of interest in Android devices overall.
In just two months, Android has emerged as the second most popular platform used to access InformationWeek’s mobile web site, pushing aside BlackBerry and taking a meaningful bite out of Apple’s iPhone share of traffic, says Tom Smith, TechWeb VP.
In November 2009, Android accounted for eight percent of mobile page views at TechWeb, compared to 59 percent for Apple and 17 percent for Blackberry, says Smith.
In December, though, Android did far better. Apple had 51 percent share; Android 24 percent; Blackberry eight percent, he says.
Google, which just released the the Nexus One phone, now says the Nexus Two will have a physical keyboard and will be more suitable for enterprise users (obligatory boilerplate: "Nexus One" is aimed at the Apple iPhone; Nexus Two will challenge the BlackBerry").
Android enthusiasts will be pleased by the explosion of activity, right? Well, yes and no. The whirlwind of activity could have an opposite effect: either freezing potential buyers into inaction as they wait for the next device, the next offer, the next set of business arrangements and carriers.
Social psychologists Sheena Iyengar, PhD, a management professor at Columbia University Business School, and Mark Lepper, PhD, a psychology professor at Stanford University, have demonstrated the downside of "excessive" choice.
In a 2000 paper the researchers showed that when shoppers are given the option of choosing among smaller and larger assortments of jam, they show more interest in the larger assortment.
But when it comes time to pick just one, they're 10 times more likely to make a purchase if they choose among six rather than among 24 flavors of jam.
In a separate study, Iyengar and Wei Jiang, PhD, a finance professor at Columbia Business School, analyzed retirement-fund choices, ranging from packages of two to 59 choices, among some 800,000 employees at 647 companies.
Instead of leading to more thoughtful choosing, however, more options led people to act like the jam buyers: When given two choices, 75 percent participated, but when given 59 choices, only 60 percent did. In addition, the greater the number of options, the more cautious people were with their investment strategies, the team found.
Relatedly, too much choice also can lead people to make simple, snap judgments just to avoid the hassle of wading through confusing options, which ironically can sabotage a company's marketing plan, finds social psychologist Alexander Chernev, PhD, of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
Chernev found that when people were offered variants of the same brand of toothpaste, cavity-prevention, tartar-control and teeth-whitening types, for instance, they tended to switch to another brand that offered a single option.
So what's the problem? "The customer has no idea how to decide and may therefore switch to another brand that doesn't require making tradeoffs," Chernev says.
In that case, they often choose what Herbert Simon, PhD, first referred to as a "satisficing" option: people make the first reasonable choice that fits their preferences, but not the "absolute best" solution.
In other words, instead of exhaustively scanning all options until finding the perfect, or "maximizing" choice, people simply make the "it's okay" choice, not working through all the possible angles.
The implication for Android buyers? Study the options, then settle on something you feel good, if not perfectly, about. Trying to buy the "absolute best" device will create anxiety and buyer's remorse at some point as the next device option is made available, the price of older options plummets or terms of service and carrier choices evolve.
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