By Andrew Eisner
The great state of California, home to Hollywood and the place Tony Bennett left his heart, casts its 83 votes for the iPhone. Meanwhile, New Jersey, the Garden State, home to Tony Soprano and Thomas Edison pledge their votes to Android. In this make believe world, electoral, or should we say "gadgetoral," votes are defined by how many smartphones of a particular type are represented in every state of the union.
In fact, if the government felt it needed to apportion the nation by smartphone ownership, it could use the findings from Retrevo's 2010 Gadget Census that looked at what gadgets people own and how they use them, including data on how many smartphones are represented per capita in each state.
iPhone states
Whether you're an iPhone owner looking for a state with more iPhone owners so you have more in common with them or you're looking to avoid them so you have a better chance of getting a connection from AT&T, states like California and Massachusetts is where you'll find the most iPhones per capita. Florida would be unlikely to cause any controversy in a gadgetoral-based election as it sits firmly in iPhone camp.
Android states
The Android party hasn't been around as long as the iPhone party but nonetheless has done a good job of capturing the smartphone market in a number of states. Unfortunately, aside from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, most of the Android states like Hawaii and Montana are not the most populous states in the country so although Android wins in a lot of states, it doesn't garner a lot of gadgetoral votes.
BlackBerry states
With all the attention iPhones and Android phones get, it's easy to forget how popular BlackBerry phones are in America. You still can't beat them for messaging or not be impressed by their adoption in corporate America as the company phone. Maybe that's why states like New York, Texas and the Beltway states of Maryland and Virginia come out on top for BlackBerrys.
The final tally
When all the hanging chads are accounted for and votes have all been tabulated, the iPhone edges out the BlackBerry for gadgetoral votes 218 to 198. Android comes in third with 122 votes but grabs the most number of states with 21 compared to iPhone and BlackBerry who are tied at 15 states apiece.
Keep in mind, gadgetoral votes take into account how the number of smartphones per capita, per state and might differ from the "popular vote" or total number of each smartphone in the country which you might find in some smartphone market reports.
Gadgetoral votes were calculated based on smartphone ownership per capita across the country. Each state was granted a 3 vote minimum consistent with electoral college. Phone states were created based on differences in per capita ownership between individual states and the national average.
The Retrevo Gadget Census was conducted online from March, 2010 through July, 2010 and received over 7,500 individual responses from Retrevo users distributed across gender, age, and location. Responses were weighted based on reported demographics to gain accurate estimations of gadget ownership and usage within and across demographics. All data is therefore reported as weighted data in which most responses have a confidence interval of +/- 4% at a 95% confidence level. You can read the full story at http://www.retrevo.com/content/blog/2010/09/gadget-census-apportions-sta... .
(Andrew Eisner is a computer journalist and the director of content for the consumer electronics shopping and review site Retrevo.com. Retrevo.com is one of the largest consumer electronics review and shopping sites in the world, helping people decide what to buy, when to buy, and where to buy. Retrevo uses artificial intelligence to analyze and graphically summarize more than 50 million real-time data points from across the web to give shoppers the most comprehensive, unbiased, up-to-date product information they need to make smart, confident purchasing decisions for electronics.)
