Androids for the east side, iPhones for the west

DemographicsBy David Alpert (Founder) June 20, 2013

Where do people use iPhones, Android phones, Blackberries, and other devices? In our region, it appears Android is far more popular on the east side of the region than the west:

Tweets from iPhones are in red, Android in green, Blackberry purple. Image from MapBox.

Click to toggle: All devices iPhone only Android only

Tom MacWright, who has written for Greater Greater Washington about open laws, made the tool for MapBox using 280 million Tweets, each of which has information about which kind of device the tweeter was using.

I initially expected to see a big blob of purple (Blackberry) in the federal core, but there is none; probably this is a combination of many federal agencies moving to iPhones, and federal workers not using their government phones for tweeting.

But really, these maps look awfully similar to the same maps of DC’s demographic divides:

Left: Race and ethnicity. Image from Wikimedia. Right: College degrees. Image by Rob Pitingolo.

Update: Several commenters noted that the combined map seems to overlay iPhones over Androids, so green areas are really areas with Androids but fewer iPhones. I’ve added a toggle to switch between the combined map, iPhone-only, and Android-only.