Countries with lower GDP more interested in Android?

StackOverflow recently published a blog post about Android queries from around the world. It looks like this:

From the article:

Countries with lower GDP per capita visit substantially more Android than countries with high GDP per capita. There are exceptions (Japan and South Korea visit more Android than the hypothesis would expect), but overall the correlation is strong (R2=0.53, p-value < 10-13).

There could be many interlocking reasons for this trend. Maybe it’s because Android phones are cheaper, or that there’s substantial Android development outsourced to lower income countries. Our traffic data can’t really answer the why.

Interesting notion about which platforms are of more interest in different parts of the world.

Here is a very similar looking map.

a

Observe how it looks basically the same.

I created this map by looking at Google Trends for searches for “kardashian” and then applying a similar colour scheme, but inverted. Seems that “we care more about Android” and “we care less about the Kardashians” are pretty tied together. If you care more about the Kardashians, you care less about Android. Maybe the US/Hollywood hegemony isn’t actually as pervasive as we think?

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I am not entirely surprised that people in lower GDP nations care less about the Kardashians.

Also, it turns out this exists:

Oh dear.

Looks like I live in the wrong part of the world. I have two Android devices but wouldn’t be sure how to spell Kardashian if you and Stuart had not done so already in this thread.

I know the Kardashian clan is quite large and one is named Kim but I wouldn’t recognise her and couldn’t name any of the others.

Cardassians
???


@jonobacon I have worked for a few publication websites, this is a well known phenomenon from inspecting their own site metrics.
I think this is why Apple are pushing iPhone in China so hard.

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Would not surprise me. Also, everyone is trying to get into China: huge market.