Red state, blue state 2012: iOS vs Android in the USA

[pavanky]

Split this into metro areas please. Generalizing for the entire state makes no sense.

[kfcm]

+100.

I split my time between a large metro, a smaller metro and rural farmland. My unscientific breakdown is this.

Metro areas are serviced by multiple carriers, many of which offer both iPhones and Android smartphones. In my metro areas, I think iPhones beat Android devices by a few percentage points (10-15% maybe) as more and more Android smartphones hit the market.

Rural areas are serviced by 2-3 carriers, max. Often it's just one primary and one secondary carrier. None of these carriers--in the areas I frequent--offer the iPhone. It's safe to say Android devices are near 100% market penetration.

Were you to do a county-by-county breakdown (or metro vs rural), I think you'd see a huge difference. Were I developing an app for agriculture, iPhones wouldn't even come into consideration.

[clarkm]

Yeah, that would provide a much clearer picture. Though I'd guess that the iOS/Android market share is highly correlated with the dominant wireless carriers in the area. Since iPhones were initially exclusive to AT&T, I'd expect areas with a high percentage of AT&T users to have the most iOS users. When smartphones were first becoming popular, users on other carriers (e.g. Verizon) didn't have the option of purchasing iPhones, so they purchased Androids.

And this distribution probably still holds today, since most users don't switch back and forth between both operating systems.

[mtgx]

Very little correlation, zero causation.

[wutbrodo]

What two factors are supposed to be correlated? I don't think the usage of "red state" and "blue state" is meant to imply that liberalism/conservatism is correlated with OS choice. They just co-opted a visualization commonly used for political leanings to show mobile OS choice.

[mason240]

So there is no connection between the two.

[adamors]

Between what and what exactly?

> In this article, we’ve broken down mobile website traffic in the US according to mobile OS.

It doesn't try to find a correlation between mobile OS usage and something else.

[lmickh]

Red and blue are connected by purple!

[protomyth]

That's a very odd number for North Dakota given that AT&T didn't sell the iPhone for a long time while Verizon sold Android devices.

[zdw]

This. Carriers would distort any phone-based metrics in the US, as there are certain areas of the country where AT&T isn't available, and thus had minimal iPhone market penetration until the 4 came out on Verizon.

[mproud]

AT&T didn’t have much for rural coverage in northern Minnesota and many parts of North Dakota, but got much better with the purchase of Cellular One (no surprise; add needed towers, get reception, get users).

However, that acquisition was a while ago. I’m sure nothing is overnight. Still, not much is truly revealed about these numbers. This article still leaves me unsatisfied.

[rdouble]

My anecdote from growing up in that area is that North Dakotans kept buying dumbphones until the iPhone was available.

[VLM]

Good observation, correction for coverage maps is a good idea. Another correction which might be relevant on a smaller-than-state scale would be distance from nearest apple iStore.

[larsberg]

It would be neat to see outside the USA. When I was just out of country for some conferences, my time spent in HK and mainland China were dominated by Android phones (especially that monsterous Samsung one). Literally, I saw more Windows Phones than iPhones.

Then, I went to Tokyo, which is much more diverse, including not only Android and iPhones, but quite a few flip-style phones.

[caublestone]

If someone wants to run this study again with some more normalization, I would be really interested in the correlation with the data and the extremity of the wealth inequality geni coefficient.

My hunch, areas that have high wealth inequality will favor one platform more than the other. Areas that have more of a gradient will be more 50/50.

[mproud]

I’d love to trust these numbers, but it’s very hard to, partly as the article provided absolutely no analysis. To me, it just looks like a blatant advertisement for their services. “What does it mean? They’re both important! Spend your money with us!”

[eterm]

Is this different to what would be expected by random sampling? The fact it goes from 70% to 70% makes me wonder if there is and underlying variation by state at all.

[shitlord]

Is there a version of the graph for the colorblind? It would be nice to have one with numbers overlayed on the states.

[gcb0]

how does the color blind decides how not to waste his vote in a national election?

i joke. i joke...

[mobile1st]

perhaps validation? "the Android operating system makes up almost 75 percent of MillerCoors’ mobile traffic"

http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/content/14614.html

[cwmma]

so that's just the same as this xkcd strip but with median income/ios/education levels/supporting gun control/access to birth control

http://xkcd.com/1138/

[yyqux]

I don't see the correlation between income and usage. E.g. look at Missisippi and Minnesota.

I don't think the article was saying that here was any connection between political beliefs, they were just presenting it in the same way as political maps are shown.