Tweet heat-map shows battle of Apple vs Android

A possible economic divide between Apple and Android mobile operating systems is among the findings of a new global heat-map built using metadata gathered from billions of tweets.

Produced by social media data provider Gnip, alongside mapping company MapBox and "data artist" Eric Fischer, the heat-map uses every geo-tagged tweet since September 2011. These 2.7 billion tweets were de-duplicated in order to arrive at 280 million unique locations, spotted throughout the globe.

MapBox chief executive Eric Gunderson says that when looking through the results there are "just staggering gentrification lines of iPhone coverage in predominately well-off areas", with a company blog noting Android quite often has more coverage in "poorer sections" of cities.

Elaine Ellis, marketing manager at Gnip, says the economic division between Apple and Android use was "absolutely" something that stands out.

“For instance,” she says, “in Detroit, the city centre is iPhone”, but she says on the outskirts of the city (“which is known for being a little rougher”), Android becomes the mobile operating system of choice. “Then when you get out to the suburbs it’s iPhone – you see that pattern repeated plenty throughout the US,” says Ellis. “We don’t know for sure the cause behind it, but we definitely see patterns.”

In Ireland, divisions don't seem to be quite so dramatic, though there are, for instance, more iPhones used to tweet in Blackrock compared to Ballybough. Overall usage between Apple and Android does lean noticeably to the former in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick (especially in the city centres).

Capitals such as Amsterdam, Paris and (despite its economic travails) Athens heavily favour iOS over Android. Interestingly, while there is also a far greater use of iOS in Madrid, iPhone usage is dwarfed by Android devices throughout the rest of Spain.

Back in Ireland, the metadata indicates usage of operating systems aside from Apple, Android and Blackberry are almost non-existent outside of Dublin city centre. Tweets geo-tagged on the M50 and other routes indicate that plenty of people are tweeting on the move in Ireland.

To view the interactive map go to http://iti.ms/11HKY46