Do Operating Systems Affect Perceptions of Smartphone Advantages and Drawbacks?

Abstract

Introduction Smartphones are becoming ubiquitous (Smith, 2011), and mobile internet services are extensively used for various sorts of applications (Gerpott, Thomas, & Weichert, 2012), including ecollaboration (Jones, 2012), e-learning (Cheong, Bruno, & Cheong, 2012; Wong, Boticki, Sun, & Looi, 2011), games (Ho & Tu, 2012), and much more. Although technology acceptance and diffusion of innovation are one of the most studied areas in information systems research (Jeyaraj, Rottman, & Lacity, 2006; Rogers, 2003; Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, & Davis, 2003), very little research has been conducted about smartphone applications' adoption (Verkasalo, Lopez-Nicolas, Molina-Castillo, & Bouwman, 2010). One of the major decisions that prospective consumers of a smartphone have to make is choosing its operating system. The decision, which operating system to choose, is based on their own perceptions, as well as perceptions and recommendations of others, while their opportunities to extensively try the devices beforehand are limited. It is important to investigate the perceptions of smartphone holders, who have been using the devices for a while. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the effects of operating systems on users' perceptions of advantages and disadvantages of smartphones, existing users of smartphone devices were selected for this empirical study. Currently, the most prevailing operating systems are Apple's iOS and Google's Android. Therefore, this study compared these two operating systems. There are more factors involved in the selection decision of a smartphone, such as the available content and applications (Laugesen & Yuan, 2010), or ideological considerations, like using free and open source software (FOSS) and open standards (Subramanian & White, 2012). However, these issues are beyond the scope of this paper, which focuses on the perceived advantages and drawbacks of smartphone operating systems by people who have already bought them, and have been using them for a while. This study contributes to the informing science transdiscipline (Cohen, 1999, 2009; Gill & Bhattacherjee, 2009; Gill & Cohen, 2009) by providing insights regarding the effects of operating systems on users' perceptions of their personal mobile information system, i.e., advantages and drawbacks of their smartphone. This empirical study is important, because only a few studies examined the adoption of smartphones, and most of them (e.g., Cheong et al., 2012) focused on smartphone applications, unlike this study that considers the device. Theoretical Context and Hypothesis Development The global research question of this study is whether operating systems affect smartphone possessors' perceptions of advantages and drawbacks of their device usage, when compared with consuming the same services via a computer. This study investigates three specific research questions (RQ), which originate from the global one: RQ1: Which sorts of perceptions of smartphone advantages and drawbacks are affected by its operating system? This question is elaborated in the subsection versus operating-system-related characteristics. RQ2: Are there of smartphone possessors' perceptions of advantages and drawbacks of their device usage? This question is developed in the subsection gender differences RQ3: Does the of possession of the smartphone affect its possessors' perceptions of advantages and drawbacks of their device usage? This question is explained in the subsection period of possession. General versus Operating-System-Related Characteristics When comparing the consumption of mobile internet services via a smartphone with consumption of the same services via a computer, there are two main sorts of characteristics that should be considered separately: general characteristics of smartphone use, and characteristics that are affected or determined by the operating system. …