Isn't that partly because Apple is one big company, but "Android" isn't? The number of Android phones rivals Apple, but they're made be a bunch of different companies, with Samsung selling the most.
12% is the max for Android OEMs, and they have to give a lot of concessions to Google to qualify.
As revealed in documents from Epic v. Google, Android's “Premier Device Program” offers 12 percent search revenue to devices with “Google exclusivity and defaults for all key functions” and no rival app stores.
In raw numbers in might make sense for Google, but I can assure you, no Android OEM will see it like that in the next negotiations.
I'm not sure you get what I'm saying. 56% of smartphones are Apples. The next biggest is Samsung, with just 26%. Next is Motorola with just 4%. Add all the Android phones together and the number doesn't come close to the number of Apple phones. So yeah, it makes sense that Google is going to give a bigger incentive to a company that is going to drive more traffic by far than any other.
But a lot of those are lower value markets for advertisers, or markets where Google has low marketshare anyway (e.g. China). So the amount of money Google is willing to pay is much lower than more lucrative markets like Western countries where people are affluent enough to afford iPhones.
Again, US is the only western country with Apple being in the lead. In all other affluent western countries, Apple is 2nd or 3rd by market share. Just recently, they even fell to 2nd place in Western Europe, which everyone said was impossible just a few years back.
And I sincerely hope that continues. I wish there was a third or fourth major player in the mobile space instead of just Android and iOS, but I guess that ship has sailed. Maybe Linux phones will get there eventually, we'll see.
That's a fair point, but (1) Apple is still huge globally, with them and Samsung dwarfing everyone else and (2) Google doesn't operate in China, and probably some other countries, so the total global market isn't relevant either.