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If you ever needed a visual representation of how Android is doing when pitted against, say, iPhone or BlackBerry devices, the folks at MapBox got your back. These guys found a way to use the raw data from Twitter to track 3 billion tweets sent from our Androids, iPhones, BlackBerries. When placed on a map of the globe by color, you get an interesting visualization of the current state of our mobile holy war.
It’s really no surprise that BlackBerry is all but non-existent (although, still thriving in Mexico). Don’t be alarmed if it appears that there’s an awful lot of red with only tiny bits of green, keep in mind red is merely drowning out all the other colors. Turn off the iPhone, and you’ll notice a whole lotta green.
Keep in mind this in no way definitive, it’s limited only to Twitter users and the device they’re using. If you’re curious to see how the mobile wars are faring in your area, hop onto MapBox to see for yourself. I have the strong urge to play Ingress all of a sudden…
I’m seeing lots of BlackBerry clusters. Toronto, New York, London, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, Barcelona, Dubai, Istanbul, Malaysia, Indonesia…
Alot of business people there. BB’s number one demographic
Well Well Well, Wheres my droid?
Please don’t call your phone a droid, even if it has a droid moniker. Too many people refer to every android phone as a droid thanks to Verizon and Motorola. Sorry, one of my biggest pet peeves…
I agree.
Even though the droid brand has created a sort of stereotype of all android devices, that brand is still in large part responsible for making android mainstream and id rather see people calling android phones “droids” then seeing everyone with an iPhone.
DROID. Sorry couldn’t resist…. Why so you care so much about how other people refer to a phone as?
Brand awareness. That’s why.
Apple wouldn’t be happy either if people called the iPhone “the iOS phone”, “the Apple phone” or something else.
Exactly. You don’t call every car on the road a Daewoo, do you?
Bad comparison mate.
How’s this; “Do you call every Toyota a Camry?”?
Better. But still immature.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMsLArefSOw
I’ve heard it called an “Apple phone” many times – no joke.
Sure, and Apple is not happy about that.
I believe the folks at Black Box are missing something, but what was that again…?
Oh, right – the rest of the world?!
it is of the whole world, move the map around and you’ll see
Ah, then I should blame:
1) The guys at Phandroid for using such a screenshot
2) Myself for not checking the source link
Anyway, thanks :)
I had the same thought. Much as we love our cousins over the Atlantic. It has become a thing in recent years (movies etc) to refer to the US as the World.
However, I did check the source link first ;)
I thought by “the rest of the world”, you meant those of us not on Twitter. I’m Canadian and I see we’re lucky enough up here to be (just barely) shown within the main map.
Why blame Phandroid for using a screen shot of the country the author resides?
“I have the strong urge to play Ingress all of a sudden…”
I was thinking War Games :D Would you like to play a game? Global Thermonuclear Warfare.
After playing The Last of Us for 6 hrs, this map is all too familiar.
how is the game? I really wanted to get into it but I dunno if I can invest any time right now to start a new game. is it only for ps3?
Yup, only for PS3. Naughty Dog is usually the only company to have me dust off the ol’Playstation. And it’s great, I feel like it’s all building up to something. And maybe I’m desensitized to violence, but I still haven’t seen anything as violent as reviewers commented on; really nothing you wouldn’t see in your standard Hollywood action movie.
This map is useless, if all you can see is red.
zoom in to city level of a big city like Chicago, and you can see that the green is quite a bit more wide spread then the red
True, and you have the same effect if you zoom in. You will see that the green is more and more present on the map… It’s a side effect of their tools, they draw the red dot over the green one ;)
By the looks of it even purple goes over green. Uncheck the red box and cities will be painted purple. Zoom in and there is just green everywhere.
Also, click on the red iPhone box in the legend and the red will disappear from the map…then you can see all the green. Vice-versa if you click on the green Android box in the legend.
I’ve had a Droid/GNex for about 4 years now … Have never sent a “tweet” from my phone. What useless data points.
exactly what I was thinking.
I never have sent a tweet either. iPhone seems to attract the extroverts.
After reading the title, I almost thought that Kevin Krause was the author for a second.
Great example of how color theory works in these types of graphics. Trade the colors that represent Android and iOS and the map will still look bright red.
I’m guessing that you’re right, but do you have an illustration of this effect?
It’s just a well known advertising strategy that if you want to bring attention to any work of art or graphic, the color red is the first one to be seen and easiest to notice. The second to last paragraph in this little read covers it a little.
http://www.colorcombos.com/color-red-article.html
Yeah, thanks for that. I still want to “see” this phenomenon, though, of an equal part red making an equal part green nearly invisible.
I think the devs at mapbox do need to take what you said to heart and begin making their maps with a “change colors” option so that this phenomenon, if true, can be compensated for.
Definitely agree it’d be great to be allowed to choose our own colors, it would make for an interesting little experiment. Equal parts of green/red would by no means make the green invisible but if you have small enough dots then it really does drastically distract the eye. It’s interesting to look at colorful advertisements and notice how they always use more yellow than red if they contain various colors.
I zoomed into my road.. I am the only house on that road. We all have Android phones but the road is dotted with quite a few red points on it and no green points. So I dont put much faith into this.
But look at the shiny colors! iPhone users are easily amused and told what to do. This map is likely created by them for them so they can all be amazed at how awesome they are.
Maybe someone with an iPhone snuck onto your road and posted a bunch of tweets while you weren’t looking…MUHAHAHAHA.
useless map
Yet those of us that don’t bother with Twitter are not represented at all.
I would hazard to guess that people using iphones are more likely to be tweeting. You know, hipsters do hipster stuff.
Dan
Indeed, iphone people generally think other people care what they are doing…”getting coffee at starbucks”, “thrift shopping for a new belt buckle”, “drowning kittens”, hence all the tweeting. Android people generally realize nobody cares about that stuff.
You want to know what I think is cool that you don’t tweet.! If you don’t tweet twitters not for you don’t be snobs hipsters my ass
I can’t tell by your grammar if you are angry at me or agreeing…
This is how you guys sound to me…
” you don’t like what I like! Therefore I’m going to be
Insulting and make broad inaccurate accusations against
Y’all! ”
When are you guys going to grow up and just accept
The fact that not everybody wants a damn android phone?
I tried one… I didn’t like it so I switched back. Why is that such a crime
To you people?
Get over it.
P.S. – ill answer the what am I doing here question in advance.
I read isource but also read android stuff too because I like to be
Well informed and not miss out on all tech news contrary to what you think about apple users. That and someone from the iOS community needs
To correct your untrue generalizations of us.
I’m going to address this reply in the most mature possible way I can….
your side started it
Not in my circle of people. Me and my apple
Users get harassed by android friends / relatives trying
To make us switch like crazy cult members who try to make
You change religions.
Y’all talk about how we’re sheep but you’re just as bad..
I understand what you are talking about
Cool, I thought, let’s see what parts of the world have the most Android users. Then the map appeared, and of course it’s a map of Planet USA…
If you had followed the link in the article, you could have moved the map around to wherever you wanted to see. It just starts being centered on the US.
No, it’s easier to complain.
Thanks @shonangreg, that’s great! I wasn’t at my home PC so I didn’t realize you could click on it. As for @Big_EZ, I guess it’s even easier to make a “witty” comment than to think there might be a reason…
Being that your commenting on Phandroid I assume you have an Android phone. I have no problem viewing it on my Android devices.
Pocket, offline.
Auto-spelling corrections, when coming from a phone, also make us look like idiots at times. Our social protocols are lagging the technology when it comes to online discussion forums.
I’m guessing the differences between PC and mobile device web pages will diminish more quickly than us actually developing a new protocol, though.
If we were together somewhere, I’d get a drinkload a bowl for you both. Cheers :-)
It would be interesting if they used Google+ data in stead of twitter data.
I love the holidays…look at all the pretty green & red lights…
Lookes like that plague game inc game I played where the disease was called iphone :P ended up annilating all of humanity…
The map is fairly misleading. If you go the site and zoom in on any city it looks like there are clearly more android users. But when looking at a map of the entire country it looks like iPhone users rule. I think the red color is just dominant. Also if you zoom in on any city you will see the iPhoine user base is largely clustered around the wealth area of the city where people are prone to buy expensive items as status symbols and care less about their lack of features.
look at all those ppl texting/tweeting while driving…. tsk tsk
Red color layer (ios) is on top of green color layer (android) which hides green dots. This in effect makes the map look less green than it should. Zoom into an area and switch on/off red/green layers to see for yourself. Bad design.
I wish they would have included Windows Phone 8 so that I could have gotten a good belly laugh.
they did
That’s what “Other” is.
Congratulations, Microsoft, your phone OS is “Other”. /snicker
I don’t tweet either. I only use it to look at @ilikegirlsdaily
All this shows is android users don’t tweet much
I can’t see this being useful for anything more than twitter usage. There are vast swaths of people who do not use twitter. Moreover the color layering shows plenty of bias…
what the hell is Twitter?. This is a stupidest metric I’ve ever seen. I’ve never touched Twitter in my life. this is basically a map of where every celebrity and 13 year old girl lives because it’s the only thing I know that uses Twitter.
Excuse me, I do not mean to be rude, but where is blackberry users?
this is not accurate, Droidlife.com has the same article with the oppssite color’s. http://www.droid-life.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Screenshot_6_21_13_9_01_AM-650×461.png
this is not accurate, droidlife.com has the same article with the opposite color’shttp://www.droid-life.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Screenshot_6_21_13_9_01_AM-650×461.png
Maybe you gotta click on each button to show the results. hmmm
This tells me more iPhone users use Twitter than do Android users. Been using Android for about 3 years now, I have a Twitter account only because it was required to log in to some site. Never used it aside from that though.
yea im sorry…. its a well known fact there are more android devices connected now than iPhones, this is just completely wrong, from the map shown it should at least be MOSTLY greed
Useless map. Before this map could be considered remotely good they have to merge in Google Plus and FB data. Even than it wouldn’t cover 5/6 of the world population
It’s also biased. It just shows that more Twitter users use iPhones… or that more iPhone users use Twitter.
Edit: I, and others here, have misinterpreted the map. It is definitely biased toward Twitter users, but many of the blue Android dots are covered by red iPhone dots. If you turn off the red dots, you can see the blue dots behind them.
Zoom in on Chicago. Android green is spread out evenly across the entire area, following population distribution. iPhone red is strongly concentrated downtown and in the wealthier north/east portions of the city, and almost non-existent in the lower income and minority west, south west, and south sides.
It’s really quite stunning the difference.
Also, what’s up with Spain? No one there likes Apple? (South Korea being Android territory I can understand, but Spain?)
Ya, I have not used a twitter app to tweet from my phone. PC yes, but not from phone.
I’m also noticing that in my tri-county area the largest concentrations of Android users are in the lower income areas while the highest concentration of iPhone users are in the upper to upper middle class parts of town. All the middle income areas I looks pretty even, I’d call it a push.