Digitimes: Android Pay to be Mobile Payments Leader
There are more options than ever before for making or receiving mobile payments, and the sheer numbers are probably starting to unnerve some users.
However, new word from Digitimes suggests that there may be a clear winner in the mobile payment stakes: Android Pay.
The report noted that Android Pay actually beats Apple Pay for several reasons, most notably that Android Pay will be usable in more locations. While Apple Pay requires certain agreements be struck and infrastructure changes be made, Android Pay can work in more settings.
Moreover, Android has a much broader installation base, with Android devices accounting for more than three quarters of all mobile device shipments just in the second quarter of 2015. Apple Pay, meanwhile, is only available on Apple devices and certain ones at that.
Some also expect Android Pay to represent a better security proposition, featuring several identification techniques put to work to protect user data. Apple Pay, meanwhile, may be more focused on protect privacy. However, the Digitimes report didn’t give a timeline in terms of how long it would take for Android Pay to achieve this supremacy.
The problem with this study, of course, is that Digitimes may have overlooked a few key points. Perhaps the biggest of these is twofold, namely Samsung Pay and G Pay, the new service possibly forthcoming from LG. It’s going to be hard to see how LG and Samsung users will turn away from a native service to go after the more generalized Android Pay.
So with at least some Samsung and LG users out of the fray, that’s going to put a bit of a crimp in Android Pay’s potential dominance.
A second point to consider comes from 2014, and a study from Business Insider. The Business Insider report drew on statistics from IBM, and noted that, back then, fewer users were turning to Android devices to shop, and those who did, on average, spent less.
While that did narrow a bit as time went on, more recent word from SmartInsights.com suggests that there’s still a gap between shopping on iOS and shopping on Android. So take the reduced shopping on Android devices, and couple it with the number of native platforms emerging, and suddenly Android Pay’s market dominance looks a bit shaky.
Naturally, this is all projection; it’s entirely possible that Android Pay will ultimately become the big deal when it comes to mobile payments. The numbers of users sticking with native services may fall, Android users might become bigger shoppers, and so on.
Indeed, if Android Pay just becomes one of the top services, like in the top five or so, that’s much more likely to happen.
For now, the idea that Android Pay will become the top of the food chain when it comes to mobile payments doesn’t seem quite so clear-cut. While it’s got advantages to consider over Apple Pay, it’s still going to have quite a bit to fend off before it can really claim that top slot.