Americans have conducted an average of 274,000 iPhone-related searches per week since the beginning of the year, and they generated more than 2 million click-throughs to Apple.com, according to a study by comScore, which pointed out that product-specific search activity can provide an important gauge of consumer demand.
When the product was first announced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at Macworld on January 9, iPhone-related search activity jumped to more than 1.1 million searches during the week ended January 14, comScore said.
From February through May, the number of weekly searches ranged between 80,000 and 200,000 – high levels of search activity for an individual product, comparable to the number of searches for Motorola’s popular “Razr” that was already available to consumers, according to comScore.
As Apple’s major iPhone advertising campaign touched off in June, search activity again spiked, comScore found, with 704,000 iPhone-related searches for the week ended June 10, followed by 727,000 during the week ended June 17, and peaking with 1.2 million for the week ended June 24.
Some additional findings from the study:
- Through June 24, nearly 6.9 million searches were conducted that included the term “iPhone.”
- Of those searches conducted, more than half (3.7 million) were for “iPhone”
- Nearly one in ten (638,000) were for “Apple iPhone.”
- The most common related topic was price: “iPhone Price” with 217,000 searches and “Apple iPhone Price” with 57,000 searches.
- The next most popular topic was release date: “iPhone Release Date” with 87,000 searches and “Apple iPhone Release Date” with 26,000 searches.
- iPhone-related searches generated more than 7.8 million click-throughs to websites since the beginning of the year, led by Apple.com with 2.3 million.
- Other top click-through destinations include top gadget blogs Engadget.com (288,000 click-throughs) and Gizmodo.com (272,000 click-throughs).
- Websites for AT&T and Cingular, which have the exclusive carrier rights to the iPhone, generated 151,000 and 124,000 click-throughs, respectively.
“In a previous study conducted by comScore, we found that product-related searches in the consumer electronics category can result in conversion rates as high as 25 percent within 90 days of the search – when one examines buying that occurs across all channels,” said James Lamberti, SVP of search solutions at comScore.
“Achieving such a high conversion rate may ultimately prove difficult with a new product, but if that assumption were to hold true it could yield as much as $1 billion in search-driven iPhone sales when factoring in the $500 to $600 price tag.”
