The war for mobile supremacy between Apple’s iOS powered iPhones and Google’s Android powered phones has been as cutthroat as the days of privateers on the High Seas.
The switching of most desktop users to mobile (for at least a few hours a day), had these giants concerned about conversion of one’s market share into the other’s, with Apple keeping their system as closed sourced, with hardly any widgets that could be added to it in comparison to Google’s (such as the use of the lock-screen or black-screen for monetization, a move now taking place mostly on wearables).
Yes, we’ve been time and again into the value of users on each ecosystem, with Apple winning only by quality and not quantity.
One of the main reasons Apple has been so “popular” among its users as by creating their OS in such a way that a user would think twice about switching between an iPhone and an Android based phone, as the data transfer was almost unattainable or for the most part, just a horrendous experience.
Google does offer its roster of products for iPhone as the most popular email service still is gmail, with added products such as Google Drive.
Now Google has done something that could loosen Apple’s hold over its captive audience, it has added a nice feature for Google Drive that would ease iPhone users switch to Android based phones.
What Google has done is transform its cloud app into a migration tool, which allows users to have their calendars, contacts, images, documents – absolutely everything – backed on Google’s end, which allows them to then purchase an Android based phones and with their gmail account just migrate all information from their iPhones to their new Android phones.
The process is super easy, it only takes three steps:
- Have Google Drive or at least the most recent update
- Navigate to Menu > Settings > Backup and select the relevant data to be backed up
- Have an Android based phone at the ready to receive data automatically (but make sure your iMessage is switched off post transition, or you will experience problems with text messages not delivered)
Yes, Apple did offer a similar, less blunt tool called Move to iOS back in 2015, but we do think this move by Google could be another nail in Apple’s coffin as it becomes less and less relevant, with most mobile users using Android as their choice of OS as well as their numbers multiplying faster than Apple’s.