Profile of a Hunch iPhone Owner

ReadWriteWeb covered a study today conducted by Retrevo on what makes iPhone users tick.  We thought we’d compare some of the study’s findings to what iPhone-toting Hunch users say.

Where the data comes from and how it’s asked:

More than 50,000 Hunch users have answered this question about whether they own an iPhone.  The question is one of more than 1,500 “THAY” (Teach Hunch About You) questions which help Hunch learn about each user in order to propose better decision outcomes.  Hunch users have answered more than 25 million THAYs since Hunch’s launch earlier this year, so we can look at how iPhone owners have answered other THAY questions in order to get a sense of who they are.

Profile of an iPhone user:

Retrevo found that iPhone users skew female.  We found the opposite, with 14% of female Hunchers saying they have an iPhone but 25% of males saying they have one.  Flipped the other way, of Hunch users with an iPhone, 75% are male, which is significantly more than the 65% of general Hunch users who are male.

What about some of the report’s other conclusions, that iPhone users tend to be materialistic, shallow, or flaky?  Hunch data indicates:

• iPhone users are no more likely to enjoy “looking at themselves in the mirror” than users without an iPhone
• When asked what they most desire, iPhone users are just a smidge more likely to say “obtaining wealth” or “having prestige” rather than “building family” or “giving back”, but the results are basically a wash
• As you might expect, iPhone users are significantly more likely to be early adopters of technology
• iPhone users are significantly more likely to own not just one, but multiple domain names
• When it comes to magazines, they are most strongly correlated with liking Fast Company and (no big surprise) disliking Reader’s Digest (note: sample size is lower for this very specific question)
• They’re just a little bit less likely to be the one to say “Let’s talk about our relationship” rather than the person who cringes when they hear that from someone else
• iPhone owners are significantly more likely to have liberal, rather than conservative, political views
• iPhone users are significantly more likely to use a mobile device to look up a word’s meaning
• On the “super-geek” scale, we found that a full 11% of Hunch’s iPhone owners have ridden a Segway.  That’s nearly 3 times the rate of those who don’t have or want an iPhone.
• iPhone owners were no more likely than non-iPhone owners to have been a band geek in high school. (as a former band geek myself, I found this disappointing)
• iPhone owners are more likely to enjoy helping other people with technology
• iPhone users have a greater incidence of donating blood, contributing to a political party or campaign, and donating their time to an organization
• iPhone users are a bit more likely to be social at parties and throw parties themselves

How do you sum all that up?

We’d be hard pressed to sum up the above in just a few descriptive words.  iPhone users seem to be a complex bunch who quite clearly like gadgets and trend towards the geeky side of life.  But as far as a claim that they are more materialistic or shallow?  Hunch’s data doesn’t really seem to support that.

Methodology Caveats:

A Hunch user is free to answer none, some, or all of the THAY questions; they are entirely optional, and can be answered at a user’s leisure on the site.  On the one hand, this is not a controlled scientific process since the questions are answered by those choosing to answer them (rather than the user being semi-forcefully guided to answer through a sequencial process).  On the other hand, the questions are designed to be fun and engaging, and since users know that their primary purpose is to improve Hunch’s results for them, we’ve found that users enjoy answering the questions and tend to respond honestly and very consistently.

Want more?

We previously blogged about “iPhone envy” among students.  And to boil all this down to the concrete decision many people want to make, try Hunch’s “Blackberry or iPhone?” topic.