Your argument would make sense if iOS had like a 90% market share. Then sure, maybe the deal is that only weirdos who don't care about this objectively important thing are on Android.
But the fact is, Android has plenty of market share. Even if half of Android users are weirdos who don't care about this objectively important thing (with the rest of the normal people migrating to iOS), it would still have positive ROI to build this objectively important thing for the people who care about this objectively important thing, but are on Android for whatever other reasons.
The way to square this circle is say, "Actually, it turns out that this thing isn't objectively important. Maybe a small population cares about it a lot, but most don't."
Which is, in fact, what I've been saying.
This has the benefit of also squaring with the rest of the evidence.
> But the fact is, Android has plenty of market share.
The point you're missing is that not all market share is created equal in terms of revenue potential. There could be absolute billions of users on Android but it doesn't really matter if they're unwilling to pay for anything. And that's largely been the case--it's well documented at this point that iOS users are vastly more willing to spend money on apps by practically a 2:1 margin, and generally have a higher net-worth that advertisers like to target. [1]
So since this is inherently about the ROI, it frankly doesn't even matter if Android users do care about the user experience as much as iOS users do. Objectively Meta (or any company) is not going to throw investment at a platform that doesn't pay it back at a rate competitive with iOS. Like this just makes sense. Sure, you could maybe goose ROI on Android with some better investment, but if you'd make more back applying those same resources to your iOS team then it's a pretty open and shut case, right?
And so that's how we end up in a place where users have to choose what matters to them. And on balance Android has a lot of other things going for it that might be more important for a lot of people. But to me general app quality does make sense as part of the explanation for iOS market share increasing during a time of free-flowing stimulus checks, as you pointed out. If you have some extra money to splurge, it might make a lot of sense to buy that more expensive iPhone that delivers a better app experience. These things can move the needle--that's the competitive advantage I'm talking about.
For me at least, it's certainly an important part of the calculus.
Yes, Android users monetize less than iOS users. And if you're a small shop whose apps reach, I dunno, 100,000 users (or 1M, or even 10M), and your Android users are around half the users but let's say 20% of your revenue base, then maybe it doesn't make sense to chase marginal improvements to your Android revenue.
But Instagram has 1B MAUs or so and $40B in annual revenue. Even if Android users are only 20% of its revenue base, chasing incremental improvements in that amount of revenue ($8B) is absolutely worth hiring 10-20 Android engineers and having them focus on that improvement -- if improving that feature actually engages more users. It's an easy case to make.
But the fact is, Android has plenty of market share. Even if half of Android users are weirdos who don't care about this objectively important thing (with the rest of the normal people migrating to iOS), it would still have positive ROI to build this objectively important thing for the people who care about this objectively important thing, but are on Android for whatever other reasons.
The way to square this circle is say, "Actually, it turns out that this thing isn't objectively important. Maybe a small population cares about it a lot, but most don't."
Which is, in fact, what I've been saying.
This has the benefit of also squaring with the rest of the evidence.