South Africa’s major cities are dominated by BlackBerry users, with Apple’s iPhone, Android and other handsets paling in comparison.
This is clear from an interactive map released by mapping company Mapbox in conjunction with social media data aggregator GNIP.
The map shows the locations of tweets posted from mobile phones. In Johannesburg, for example, red dots indicating iPhones are prevalent in Sandton, Rosebank and the surrounding northern suburbs. While Android and other devices are represented, too, are dwarfed by BlackBerry.
Downtown Johannesburg, along with dense urban areas such as Alexandra and Soweto are BlackBerry strongholds, with no other manufacturer featuring remotely as heavily.
The same holds true in Cape Town. The city itself is a mix of devices, with iPhones featuring prominently, but outside of the city and its southern suburbs, BlackBerry is far and away the most common device used with Twitter. Given its technology community, it’s little surprise that Stellenbosch shows a wide range of devices, but even there BlackBerry devices appear to be most common.
It’s also clear from the map just how dominant the iPhone is in the US states of California and New York, and how popular the iPhone and Android devices are in Europe. BlackBerry’s dominance in emerging markets like Indonesia and Malaysia is also clear to see.
Perhaps most alarming is how little activity there is in sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa. — (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media
- Visit Mapbox’s interactive map
