Most regular users want as many features as they can get, for a reasonable price point. And Samsung is king in that market – their A series phones have a huge sales volume.
Some users can afford real premium phones. And Samsung's offerings mostly just kinda suck software wise, even when the hardware is decent. Techies know this and have a huge variety of stock Android alternatives to choose from (which, somehow, continue to exist…), and even non-techies very quickly figure out that Apple or Google Pixel phones just work, unlike Samsung's.
Everything I've heard about Pixels tells me you're not right. They have a ton of bugs, besides the mediocre to bad hardware.
And Samsung moves more premium phones (aka S-series) each year than all Pixel phones ever sold.
You probably live in the US, but Pixel phones are also almost impossible to get outside the US (though things are getting slightly better) and their market share where they're available is minuscule in whichever market segment you're looking.
Outside of the US Chinese phones, besides Samsung A-series, dominate. And in many countries flagship Chinese models are sold more than Apple phones. And BTW, if you thought Samsung adds bloatware, you should see what Xiaomi or Huawei add :-))
Regular users don't care about bloatware. It's a techie fetish.
I've been around the block a ton of time and this discussion is so old and boring it's not even worth having. "Big binaries suck" -> Electron apps winning everywhere. "Lean operating systems" -> Windows never budging on the desktop and Android, which is kind of a mobile device pig winning the mobile battle.
It's actually somewhat rare that techie (early adopter) interests align with regular user (late adopter or laggard) interests.
This is just... wrong. I mean, I don't know what bubble you're living in, but my bubble is not like this.
Every single person I've ever met, except one, uses either an iPhone or a Galaxy. Probably a sample size of 100 people. The one exception uses a Pixel, and he's a software engineer.
The reason why I'm confident enough in saying you're wrong, is because my experience tracks with US smartphone shipment metrics. Apple and Samsung are the leaders in the US. Pixel isn't even in view of the finish line. Bluntly: Nerds use Pixel devices. Legacy from the Nexus days. Most people wouldn't even know what a Pixel is.
Modern Samsung devices are absolutely fantastic phones. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't used one since TouchWiz.
I have a similar experience to you but with one difference. I do know a handful of people who have an Android phone which isn't a Samsung Galaxy or Pixel. When I ask why they chose that device, the response makes it clear that they have absolutely zero interest in mobile phones aside from what we'd consider the absolute basics.
And everyone I know who has a Pixel is the sort of person who is passionately anti-Apple. I'm not saying this is a universal experience, but it's certainly true for the three people I know who have a Google Pixel. I'm serious when I say I've never met a more passionate Apple fanboy than those people are passionately anti-Apple.
>Bluntly: Nerds use Pixel devices. Legacy from the Nexus days. Most people wouldn't even know what a Pixel is.
I don't know about that. At least in my city, I know more people with Pixels than Galaxy phones. Granted, I can count the Android users on one hand and about 90 percent of my phonebook is iPhones so who knows.
Is your bubble only physically local or constrained in some other way?
My bubble is mostly white collar college educated people, but spanning across the western world. I would have thought the same about Pixels but just the other day i found out someone I know in the US has an older Pixel device.
Most people won’t know what a pixel phone is, is true for sure.
Some users can afford real premium phones. And Samsung's offerings mostly just kinda suck software wise, even when the hardware is decent. Techies know this and have a huge variety of stock Android alternatives to choose from (which, somehow, continue to exist…), and even non-techies very quickly figure out that Apple or Google Pixel phones just work, unlike Samsung's.