It's probably because of the buy Bitcoin option within his blockchain account that offered him the convenience over a traditional desktop client. In a way that's understandable, especially for someone just having joined crypto.

Another possibility may be that he wasn't aware of light clients, and just assumed that he had to install a full node client, which might be a disturbing factor for a newbie. Either way, there are enough light clients available.

I use both desktop and mobile clients from Electrum, and thus far haven't had any problems. In the Google play store there are quite some complaints concerning app crashes of the mobile client, but I personally don't experience any problems.