Price-paranoid Android?

By G.F. | SEATTLE

THEIR names may be worthy of the Marx Brothers, but Boingo and Gogo have recently released a slew of serious data which shed light on the ways of web users. Boingo offers access to Wi-Fi networks around the world through a single account with a flat-rate or metered service plan. It also runs paid Wi-Fi service for passengers at over 60 North American airports. Gogo, meanwhile, provides in-flight internet on planes that flit over America. Both show that Android users are less likely than their Apple-toting peers to splash out on extra connectivity.

Boingo's latest figures concern individual connections to the company's portals, whether these end with a user logging on to its network (either for a fee or as part of a subscription), checking free weather or gate information, or examining the fees and disconnecting. The company has tracked these numbers since June 2007, the month when the iPhone debuted. Unsurprisingly, the share of mobile devices lept from 0.1% that month, when few mobile browsers were capable of displaying a Wi-Fi gateway page, to nearly 60% in June this year. The number of devices that routinely connect to Boingo's routers grew nearly fivefold over the same period. Laptop growth may have paled in comparison with the mobile sort, but that did not stop it from doubling.