Android dominates mobile-related social media conversations: Study

Listening to consumer conversations on social media can help device manufacturers gain important insights to help them shape their product strategies.

According to a social media study conducted by Social Wavelength, Google's Android mobile operating system (OS) leads other mobile platforms by a huge margin. The study says that 58 per cent (6 out of every 10 people) of all social media conversations related to mobile are around Android OS, thereby establishing the predominance of Android as an OS of choice.

This study was carried out by monitoring 1.5 lakh conversations on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook as well as blogs and other online community forums about mobile brands using iOS, Windows, Android and BlackBerry platforms between October 28 and November 27, 2012.

The topics of discussions and drivers of conversations were also identified to understand the kind of conversations. The keywords used were simple platform‐related terms and handset models present in India that use these smartphone platforms. This research was carried out by Social Wavelength using Radian6, a part of SalesForce.com, which is an enterprise level social media listening tool.

Speaking to afaqs! about the objective behind the study, Mihir Kirkire, co-founder and VP, Social Wavelength, says, "It was our endeavour to show brands how important it is to tap consumer conversations on social media. Listening to consumer conversations can help these brands gain insights that might be very important in shaping the product strategy."

Kirkire adds that the study also allows competitor benchmarking and helps device marketers to determine and be very specific about their choice of operating systems. He adds that reports on each mobile platform will be published in the future.

The study further states that Samsung, HTC and Sony were the top three mobile brands, which have collectively contributed to 93 per cent of all the conversations about Android on the social medium. "The flagship handset models are the primary conversation drivers of smartphone brands, occupying the largest share of voice in their discussions,"

the study notes.

According to the study, Samsung not only accounts for most of the conversations on social media about Android manufacturers, it also contributes quite a high share of true sentiment. Sony comes second by volume, but languishes at the bottom because it has a higher share of negative conversations. In fact, other lesser known brands have much better sentiments.

Though the report didn't look into the ratio of positive and negative sentiments of overall conversations, it does say that a brand with a larger share of voice may have poor brand reputation on social media, that is, it may have a higher negative feedback than other brands with a much lower share of voice.

Describing what people discuss most in their conversations, the study reveals that when talking about Android smartphones, people tend to speak mostly about features, followed by prices.

Twitter, by far, contributes the largest share of conversations. Mainstream media, which is primarily the first source of any news, trails by a long distance.