Friday, February 26, 2010

Android vs. Apple: The flyover states

Google phones may outsell iPhones in eight U.S. states. Can you guess which ones?

Click to enlarge. Source: Myxer

Here’s a bit of geographical trivia that may have business consequences.

According to a Myxer BoomBox report scheduled for release Friday morning, smartphones running Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system have closed the gap and may actually outsell Apple’s (AAPL) iPhones in eight states U.S. states.

Unfortunately for the manufacturers of Android phones, the states where they are selling best, according to this report, include some of the least-populated in the country.

They are, in alphabetical order:

  • Arizona (2009 pop. 6.6 million)
  • Montana (974,000)
  • Nebraska (1.8 million)
  • New Mexico (2 million)
  • North Dakota (647,000)
  • South Dakota (813,000)
  • Wyoming (544,000)

States where the difference is less than 10%, Myxer lists as swing states. They include Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, South Carolina and Virginia.

Source: Verizon

Why the geographical differences? It’s tempting to read into the BoomBox map some kind of anti-Apple resistance in the so-called flyover states. But we suspect it has more to do with the holes in AT&T’s (T) 3G coverage made famous my Verizon’s (VZ) “There’s a map for that” ads.

And take the whole thing with a grain of salt. Myxer bills itself as “a go-to consumer destination for mobile entertainment and personalization — with one of the world’s largest catalogs of ringtones, wallpapers, videos, applications and games.” There’s enough sample bias in that description to fill the wide open spaces of Wyoming.

There are more charts and graphs about Android user patterns in Myxer’s January BoomBox report. It’s scheduled to be posted here on Friday.

See also:

  • Verizon vs. AT&T: There’s a map for that

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

[Via http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com]

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