Nearly two weeks ago I successfully pre-ordered an iPhone 5, and my heart nearly skipped a beat when I finally received a notification that it was in the mail. The Android platform may be gaining users faster than the iPhone, but as someone who voraciously consumes everything at the intersection of fashion and technology, the Android is digital equivalent of chopped liver. I don’t have FOMO, I know I’m missing out! To attempt to illustrate/quantify this, I did a quick survey of my favorite fashion sites to build a list of the best fashion apps. I found nearly thirty fashion apps all available on the iPhone. How many of those are currently available for Android phones? Seven. 7! And those are just the apps I found in 20 minutes.
For the record, here are the apps available on the iPhone:
Bloomingdale’s Big Brown Bag, Catalog Spree, Chictopia, Cloth, DVF, eBay, Elle Collections, FashioNomad, Gilt Groupe, Go Try It On, HipSwap, Lucky Digital Concierge, Lyst, Material Wrld, Net-a-Porter, Pose, Poshmark, Sartorialist, ShopNear.Me, Snapette, Style.com, Stylebook, Swaag.it, the Cools, the Outnet Style Cred, Threadflip, Trendabl, WWD.
And the apps available on the Android:
Bloomingdale’s Big Brown Bag, eBay, Gilt Groupe, HipSwap, Net-a-Porter, Pose, Snapette.
I would venture to guess that most – if not all – of these apps were available in the iPhone well before they made it to the Android platform. And of the few fashion apps I did have on my phone, I eventually had to remove them due to low disk space (Android phones don’t have the array of gigabyte choices that iPhone users do). When it comes to fashion apps, Android just isn’t up to par with iPhone. While there are many metaphors to describe the situation, you could say it’s the equivalent of a staid department store which rarely picks up a new label versus an adventurous boutique that constantly introduces new labels. Where would you rather shop?
What’s your take – are you an iPhone or an Android user? And now that I’m on on the iPhone, which apps should I download?
Photo via Apple
