Remember all that caterwauling outside of MacWorld a couple of weeks ago? The ecstatic throngs seizing up and falling to the floor upon sight of the iPhone, bringing back memories of Michael Jackson tours in the Eighties where girls would cry themselves into comas? Yeah, well, if searches for the term “iPhone” are any indication, expect that mass market hysteria to continue.
Hitwise’s LeeAnn Prescott reports that in the two weeks that iPhone has been public knowledge, the buzzy apparatus has overtaken Apple’s other blockbuster, the iPod.
It wasn’t just that the share of searches for the iPhone was greater than the share of searches for iPod for those weeks. But the week ending January 13th surpassed the share of searches for iPod at any time during 2006.
“This early surge in interest should indicate a rosy future for the iPhone when it becomes available in later in the year,” writes Prescott.
Tech blog, Engadget, was the big winner in iPhone coverage. Live blogging of the MacWorld event earned the site a 29 percent increase in market share of total visits that week, lifting it to the fourth most-visited site by searchers hunting iPhone information, just behind Apple’s site, Apple’s iPhone Blog, and Google News.
Searchers aren’t fooling around with just information searches, though. The third and fourth highest volume phrases containing “iPhone” were “iPhone price” and “iPhone cost,” indicating that maybe, just maybe, the public’s ready to buy.
It’s a good thing they have six months to save. All that thrashing around on the floor in the throes of Steve Jobs-induced gadgetry rapture has caused their folding money to “come unstowed.”
For the charts and graphs version, visit Hitwise’s blog.
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