Trump Mostly Tweeting From An iPhone 2 Weeks After Apple Boycott Call

More than half of the GOP front-runner’s most recent 200 tweets were sent using Twitter’s iPhone app.

Tim Peterson on March 4, 2016

“Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore 3” by Gage Skidmore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.

It’s tricky to trust the things a politician says. Take Donald Trump, for example.

Two weeks ago, the Republican Party’s front-runner in this year’s presidential election called for people, including himself, to stop using Apple’s products over the tech company’s unwillingness to create a backdoor for the FBI to access the iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooting terrorists.

I use both iPhone & Samsung. If Apple doesn’t give info to authorities on the terrorists I’ll only be using Samsung until they give info.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 19, 2016

Boycott all Apple products until such time as Apple gives cellphone info to authorities regarding radical Islamic terrorist couple from Cal

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 19, 2016

Two weeks later, Mr. Trump has ignored his own boycott. Marketing Land analyzed the most recent 200 tweets the candidate has sent — dating from February 23, four days after his boycott call, until Friday morning — and found that Mr. Trump, or someone tweeting on his behalf, sent more than half of those tweets using Twitter’s iPhone app.

Of the 200 tweets Marketing Land checked out, 101 were sent using Twitter’s iPhone app, 98 using the company’s Android app and one using Twitter’s site. Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, didn’t respond to a question sent through Twitter on Friday asking why the candidate continues to tweet using an iPhone.

More than half of Donald Trump's 200 most recent tweets were sent using an iPhone.

For comparison’s sake, the Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton tweets mainly using TweetDeck. Of her most recent 200 tweets as of Friday morning, Ms. Clinton sent 147 through TweetDeck, 52 through Twitter’s site and one through Twitter’s iPhone app.

Hillary Clinton mainly uses TweetDeck to send her tweets.

About The Author

Tim Peterson

Tim Peterson has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011. He has reported for Advertising Age, Adweek and Direct Marketing News. A born-and-raised Angeleno who graduated from New York University, he currently lives in Los Angeles. He has broken stories on Snapchat’s ad plans, Hulu founding CEO Jason Kilar’s attempt to take on YouTube and the assemblage of Amazon’s ad-tech stack; analyzed YouTube’s programming strategy, Facebook’s ad-tech ambitions and ad blocking’s rise; and documented digital video’s biggest annual event VidCon, BuzzFeed’s branded video production process and Snapchat Discover’s ad load six months after launch. He has also developed tools to monitor brands’ early adoption of live-streaming apps, compare Yahoo’s and Google’s search designs and examine the NFL’s YouTube and Facebook video strategies.