Instagram Boss Says ‘Android’s Now Better Than iOS’

• Instagram head Adam Mosseri said Android is “now better” than Apple’s iOS.
• He was responding to YouTuber Marques Brownlee, who was asking for people’s best tech “hot takes.”
• Apple’s iOS is estimated to be more popular in the US, but Android dominates worldwide.

Which is better: iPhone or Android?

Instagram head Adam Mosseri weighed in on the topic earlier this week, reigniting a debate that has waged on since the dawn of smartphones.

“Android’s now better than iOS,” Mosseri posted on Threads in response to tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD, who had asked for people’s best tech “hot takes.”

Mosseri didn’t get into why he felt Android to be superior, but his use of the words “now better” implies that he may have previously felt Apple’s iOS had the edge. Insider reached out to Meta in an attempt to get Mosseri to expand on his reasoning, but we didn’t hear back ahead of publication.

Both Android and iOS have been wildly successful since the introduction of the first iPhone and Android phones in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

iOS dominates in the US —  Android cleans up worldwide

The question of which operating system is more popular depends on if you’re talking about the US or worldwide.

According to data from Counterpoint Research, more Americans now use iPhones running iOS than Google’s Android. iPhones first surpassed Androids in September 2022. As of the first quarter of 2023, Apple held an estimated 52% US smartphone market share, with Samsung the runner-up with a 27% share. Google, Lenovo and other brands make up the remaining percentage. 

Apple hasn’t announced recent numbers on exactly how many iOS users there are worldwide. But During the 2023 Google I/O developer conference, Android’s VP of product management Sameer Samat announced that there were 3 billion active Android devices. 

Statistica estimates that Android, which is the go-to mobile operating system for most phone-makers aside from Apple, has a much larger global market share than iOS, with 70.8% of the market share as of July 2023. Apple’s iOS has the second-highest percentage of market share with 28.4%. Those estimates include smartphones as well as other devices running mobile operating systems, like tablets.

During the rollout of Threads, Instagram’s new text-based counterpart, Meta announced that the app would be available on both iOS and Android. However, the iPhone version is so far getting a bit of extra love early on — the latest features rolled out to iPhones first, with an Android update TBD.