Originally posted on The Andera Blog.

In January Andera released a special report called “The Future of Account Opening” (check it out here if you haven’t yet) that had lots of serious stuff in it about things like where account opening is headed and what mobile account opening is, exactly, but also some really fun graphs like this one:

This data comes from mobile applications from a representative sample of customers in 2013, representing over 15,000 application starts.  If you’ve been awake anytime in the last five years, the iPhone’s leading position on this graph should come as no surprise. Apple has had a royal grip on the US mobile market for a long time now; in the past three years I have lived with 13 different roommates (we twenty-somethings are the definition of transient) and every single one of them has had an iPhone, including me. That’s a lot of iPhones!

If anything, I was surprised by how close Samsung came to Apple. One important methodological point to note is that while Google Analytics tracks each Samsung Galaxy edition separately—Samsung Galaxy S III, Samsung Galaxy SII Plus, Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini, etc—it tracks all iPhone editions under one category, “iPhone.” Because of this reporting quirk, it always looks like the iPhone is beating all other devices by a mile, but when I pulled the data into Excel and added up all the Samsungs, they rival Apple in volume.

I was intrigued, so I dug a little deeper to see the trend for Apple products over time:

This data comes from a representative sample of our online account opening customers, representing nearly 40,000 application  starts over 3 years (Note that it’s a a slightly different sample than the graph above). Until the second half of 2013, the percentage of mobile applications coming from Apple devices was steadily increasing. But not anymore; the numbers have taken a dip. Is this an early indicator that Samsung might overtake Apple in the near future? Perhaps.

The plurality of devices is one reason why we’re so into Responsive Web Design at Andera. You shouldn’t just design for iOS, because one day Android might take over, and you shouldn’t just design for Android, because one day something else might be more popular. The best you can do is choose the most adaptable platform available at the moment, and be ready to adjust when technology shifts underneath you.