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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

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Apple iPhone 3G S vs Nokia N97

June 18, 2009

The launches on June 19th of two 3G touchscreen phones from the most searched for mobile phone brands in the UK, Apple and Nokia, have created a buzz in the Hitwise office this week. Hitwise UK’s resident gadget expert, Client Intelligence Analyst Richard Seymour, has been tracking the UK’s online reaction to the Apple iPhone 3G S and Nokia N97:

Looking at the Hitwise UK Hot Consumer Electronics List, in the week ending 13th June the Apple iPhone was the most searched for phone by UK internet users. Approximately 1 in every 4 mobile phone searches was for one variation of the Apple iPhone or another – a doubling of the previous week’s volume. The Nokia N97 was the second most popular phone with 3.6% of mobile phone searches, followed by the Nokia 5800 with 2.6%. I have provided the full top ten list below:

Most Searched for phones – Hitwise Hot Consumer Electronics List w/e 13/06/09
1. Apple iPhone 24.8%
2. Nokia N97 3.6%
3. Nokia 5800 Tube 2.6%
4. Samsung F480 Tocco 1.8%
5. LG KP500 Cookie 1.6%
6. Palm Pre 1.2%
7. Samsung S5230 Tocco Lite 1.0%
8. Sony Ericsson W995 1.0%
9. LG Viewty KU990 0.9%
10. Samsung S8300 Tocco Ultra 0.8%

This list can be slightly deceptive as Apple hasn’t given its iPhones as distinctive names as its competitors, and consequently the most popular Apple iPhone search term continues to be the generic ‘iphone’. To prevent any arguments surrounding which of the newly launched phones is most popular, we have isolated all the terms relating just to the Apple iPhone 3G S and produced the following chart, which illustrates the volume of searches for the Nokia N97, Palm Pre (launched last week in the USA as an iPhone competitor), and those just relating to the new Apple iPhone.

iphone_iphone 3gs_new iphone_nokia n97_iphone 3g s_palm pre.png

The story starts off with the Nokia N97 receiving most traffic, followed by the new iPhone and then the Palm Pre. The phones experienced slow but steady increase in searches during April and May, until the week ending 30th May when searches for the Nokia N97 picked up quicker than the new iPhone. However, the surge in searches for the iPhone during the week ending 13th June meant that there were more than twice as many searches for the new iPhone than the N97, and eight times that for the Palm Pre.

Over 1,300 websites received traffic from the portfolio of New iPhone search terms last week, with the official Apple iPhone site, and the Apple UK site taking 16% of clicks from this portfolio. The Telegraph and the Mirror show they were well optimised for the phone launch, sitting in the top ten websites receiving traffic (primarily from organic traffic). Specialist sites Product Reviews and Engadget also posted relevant content on the iPhone launch to be well optimised, making 8th and 9th spots respectively. Carphone Warehouse paid for a significant 85% of its traffic, enabling the retailer to receive slightly more traffic than the O2 Shop, the only other official iPhone seller.

iphone_iphone 3gss_new iphone_iphone 3g s.png

Looking at the portfolio of terms for the Nokia N97 we can immediately see a difference, with Phones 4U receiving 84% paid traffic to sit above the Nokia UK Online Shop, which also received a significant chunk of paid clicks at 90%. Nokia’s multiple network and retailer policy has encouraged competition to breed, and as a result the paid traffic pattern continued throughout, with the Vodafone Shop, Omio and Mobile Phones Direct all receiving over 80% of their traffic through paid search.

nokia n97_n97.png

Nokia’s last big phone launch, the Nokia 5800, briefly propelled itself above the Apple iPhone in popularity during launch week, but it didn’t have a new iPhone to compete with like the Nokia N97 does tomorrow! If things changes significantly, we’ll revisit the data next week to see how launch day and the first week faired for both new phones, so keep an eye on the blog and our Twitter feed for updates.