I don’t watch a whole lot of movies, but I do enjoy seeing what’s playing, reading reviews, and finding out what’s popular. Call it a kind of cinematic voyeurism.
Recently, I wondered if people’s preference for Apple or Android had any correlation with their preferences in movies. After all, there’s a popular belief that Apple is the platform of choice for the intelligentsia, while Android is the platform of the masses. If there’s any truth in that belief, there should be some significant differences in the most popular movies between the two groups, right? Right.
So let’s do a little experiment and compare the most popular movies on Google Play and on iTunes. Here are the top ten lists from both services as of this morning:
Google Play |
iTunes |
|
1 |
Noah | The Other Woman |
2 |
The Other Woman | Noah |
3 |
Divergent | Divergent |
4 |
Heaven is for Real | Heaven is for Real |
5 |
The Lego Movie | Snowpiercer |
6 |
Transcendence | Rio 2 |
7 |
Rio 2 | The Amazing Spider-Man 2 |
8 |
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 | Transcendence |
9 |
300: Rise of an Empire | The Lego Movie |
10 |
Snowpiercer | The Grand |
Umm. Not much difference is there? The top four are the same on both lists, albeit with the top two swapping places. Nine movies appear on both lists.
OK, so what about the two movies that aren’t on both lists? Is there any significance there?
Well, Google’s Number Nine, 300: Rise of an Empire comes in at Number 27 in iTunes. That’s a noticeable difference. Contrarily, The Grand, Number Ten in iTunes, is at Number 20 for Google. If you wanted to go out on a limb and generalize from minimal data, you could argue that the intelligentsia are less interested in blood and thunder. It’s a weak argument, though. Eight of the next ten titles on Google’s list also show up in iTune’s top 25.
And, to be fair, the top ten on any list of popular media are going to be heavily biased toward recent releases. Let’s take a look at the bottom of the Top 100: Numbers 91 through 100, where there should be less influence from what’s new:
Google Play |
iTunes |
|
91 |
Vampire Academy | Idiocracy |
92 |
The Lucky One | Spaceballs |
93 |
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince | The Face of Love |
94 |
Bridemaids (Unrated) | The Dark Knight |
95 |
They Came Together | R.I.P.D. |
96 |
The Incredibles | Toy Story |
97 |
Jurassic Park | Ted (Unrated) |
98 |
Prometheus | Inception |
99 |
Iron Man 3 | Up |
100 |
Django Unchained | Endless Love |
OK, now we’re getting somewhere. No overlap there!
But is there really that much difference? Number Ninety-Six on both lists is a Pixar film. Both lists include a science fiction cult classic (Jurassic Park and Spaceballs). Both have the unrated version of a moderately popular comedy. There’s a romantic drama on both lists.
The bottom line? We may not be able to completely disprove the popular belief, but I think it’s safe to say that, at least in this one area, there’s no significant difference between Apple and Google fans.