Android vs. Apple: The flyover states
February 26, 2010: 9:30 AM ETGoogle 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 released 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)
- Maryland (5.7 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 counts 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 by 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.
Myxer's January BoomBox Report, with a nifty Flash roll-over map and lots of graphs showing Android usage patterns, is available for download here.
See also:
- Verizon vs. AT&T: There's a map for that
- Android tops iPhone 7 to 1 in free wallpaper and ringtone downloads
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
