Google Chairman Eric Schmidt made waves this week at Gartner Symposium/IT Expo, declaring Android is “more secure than the iPhone.” In part this was a response to Apple CEO Tim Cook’s recent assertion that Android is a security nightmare. What it’s not, however, is a response to customer demand.
Consumers simply don’t care about security.
Oh, sure. We say we do. But does it actually impact our purchasing behavior? Not if Android’s 79% smartphone market share is any indication.
The Android Security Quagmire
Don’t these people read? Malware attacks are on the rise, after all, with Android malware growing 292% in the second half of 2012. Indeed, Android is malware hackers’ favorite target. According to a recent Juniper Networks report, 92% of all malware has Android in its sights.
Part of this stems from its popularity, but part of it comes down to Android fragmentation. As Cook points out, Android distributors have not been adept at getting users onto the latest version of Android, which means they “have to go back and plug holes in all of this old stuff, and people don’t really do that to a great degree. So [Android devices] are more susceptible to issues.”
And yet…
Android adoption continues to explode, as Asymco illustrates:
Clearly a billion people didn’t get the memo. Or, more accurately, security is a feature that doesn’t compel mobile buying behavior.
Once upon a time, it did. But that was when companies bought phones for their employees and hence were able to mandate a secure option like Blackberry. Once consumers started voting with their own wallets, unsecured iPhones and then
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