iPhone Users Twice As Likely to Own a Mac.

I have stumbled on this article at Chitika Insights, a mobile ad data analytics firm, where the article exposes some really interesting, but not surprising, research data about iPhone users who are also Mac users.

And I think I can speculate as to why there is a huge proportion of iPhone users that are also Mac users. It's the simple fact that, if one was to go out and buy a competing mobile phone, the chance it being able to integrate or back up its data to a Mac is near zero.

Out of all the competing mobile phone operating system manufacturers, including Windows Phone, Symbian OS, Android 2... they all have one thing in common: there is no built-in support for transferring, syncing or backing up data to a Mac running Mac OS X (or anything earlier, obviously). There may be third-party developers that have integration tools out there for these competing mobile operating systems to move data to a Mac, but there is no complete, integrated solution. Apple are the only ones who have built integration facilities into iOS (some via iTunes, others through Mac OS X itself), and there are also 3rd-party iOS apps that can extend that capability through their own apps for their own data sets. There are even iOS apps that can extend the many Mac OS X applications and system services themselves! And on a few occasions, there are also apps that help iPhone users interact with various popular on-line services.

It is no wonder that people who own a Mac will turn to iPhone for their mobile phone computing platform of choice. For Mac users like myself, no other mobile computing platform cuts it for this level of integration with their Macs! The same cannot be said for Mac users using other competing mobile phones & computing devices, where most of their backup or data migration solutions are only for Microsoft Windows if to a desktop computer at all (for the time being).

Note: the iTunes Store links in this article refer to the Australian iTunes Store, not an iTunes Store of any other country. This is due to the author's Store account operating under the Australian iTunes Store Terms and Conditions, and links obtained in iTunes or the Mac App Store refer to products available in the Australian iTunes Store.

Article last updated 12th February, 2011: included some extra links to iOS apps that interact with Mac OS X applications and services; tried to use software publisher direct links instead of links to the iTunes Store where possible.

—tonza