6 ms·

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

36 points by shawnjan8 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- yyqux 13y ago
  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.
protomyth 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
- VLM 13y ago
  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.
- rdouble 13y ago
  My anecdote from growing up in that area is that North Dakotans kept buying dumbphones until the iPhone was available.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    Thinking about it, that's about right except Blackberry was pretty popular since people liked it for texting.
- mproud 13y ago
  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.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    AT&T also ticked off a lot of people during the switch by double billing them and cutting off others. Lot of switching to Verizon and Walmart.
mason240 13y ago
So there is no connection between the two.
- adamors 13y ago
  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 13y ago
  Red and blue are connected by purple!
mobile1st 13y ago
perhaps validation? "the Android operating system makes up almost 75 percent of MillerCoors’ mobile traffic" http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/content/14614.html http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/content/14614.html
pavanky 13y ago
Split this into metro areas please. Generalizing for the entire state makes no sense.
- kfcm 13y ago
  +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.
  - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
    “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.” Before I saw this report, I would've thought the same. However, it's states like the Dakotas, Montana, Maine, and Vermont where there are (apparently) more iPhone users than Android users. Those states aren't exactly known for their sprawling metropolises.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    I'm a little confused by "None of these carriers--in the areas I frequent--offer the iPhone." Before today, three of the four national carriers had the iPhone, with the fourth, T-Mobile, catching up today, and also being the least relevant since their rural coverage is pretty bad. Are these 2-3 carriers available in rural areas actually regional carriers, with no penetration by national carriers?
- clarkm 13y ago
  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 13y ago
Very little correlation, zero causation.
- wutbrodo 13y ago
  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.
  - taopao 13y ago
    Yeah, right. I think that's exactly what they were implying with the article caption.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
shitlord 13y ago
Is there a version of the graph for the colorblind? It would be nice to have one with numbers overlayed on the states.
- gcb0 13y ago
  how does the color blind decides how not to waste his vote in a national election? i joke. i joke...
mproud 13y ago
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 13y ago
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.
larsberg 13y ago
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 13y ago
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.
cwmma 13y ago
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/ http://xkcd.com/1138/

36 points by shawnjan8 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

yyqux 13y ago
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.

protomyth 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.
VLM 13y ago
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.
rdouble 13y ago
My anecdote from growing up in that area is that North Dakotans kept buying dumbphones until the iPhone was available.
- protomyth 13y ago
  Thinking about it, that's about right except Blackberry was pretty popular since people liked it for texting.
mproud 13y ago
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.
- protomyth 13y ago
  AT&T also ticked off a lot of people during the switch by double billing them and cutting off others. Lot of switching to Verizon and Walmart.

mason240 13y ago

So there is no connection between the two.

adamors 13y ago
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 13y ago
Red and blue are connected by purple!

mobile1st 13y ago

perhaps validation? "the Android operating system makes up almost 75 percent of MillerCoors’ mobile traffic" http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/content/14614.html http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/content/14614.html

pavanky 13y ago

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

kfcm 13y ago
+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.
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  “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.” Before I saw this report, I would've thought the same. However, it's states like the Dakotas, Montana, Maine, and Vermont where there are (apparently) more iPhone users than Android users. Those states aren't exactly known for their sprawling metropolises.
- mikeash 13y ago
  I'm a little confused by "None of these carriers--in the areas I frequent--offer the iPhone." Before today, three of the four national carriers had the iPhone, with the fourth, T-Mobile, catching up today, and also being the least relevant since their rural coverage is pretty bad. Are these 2-3 carriers available in rural areas actually regional carriers, with no penetration by national carriers?
clarkm 13y ago
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 13y ago

Very little correlation, zero causation.

wutbrodo 13y ago
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.
- taopao 13y ago
  Yeah, right. I think that's exactly what they were implying with the article caption.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

shitlord 13y ago

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

gcb0 13y ago
how does the color blind decides how not to waste his vote in a national election? i joke. i joke...

mproud 13y ago

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 13y ago

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.

larsberg 13y ago

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 13y ago

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.

cwmma 13y ago

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/ http://xkcd.com/1138/