I thought I’d take a look at a couple of tools I found out about recently and see what they told me about the popularity of the iPad – as opposed to what the frenzied media are saying.
The first is Google Trends. This tool lets you look at the the hottest topics – that is what people are saying – that Google has indexed. It also lets you look at the hottest searches done on Google. Well, “ipad sales” is Hot Topic number 4 out of 10. However when you compare this with Hot Searches – what people are actually looking for – the iPad does NOT appear in the top 20. Unlike Hot Topics, Hot Searches lets you change dates, so I went back, day by day, for a week to see what was there, and the iPad does NOT appear in the top 20 Hot Searches for any day during that week.
I then went to Yahoo Buzz and checked out their top 20 overall searches. Again, the iPad does not appear.
What does this all mean? Your guess is as good as mine, but it suggests to me that the press in more interested in the iPad than the public is. (Thanks to Amazon Kindle Review for giving me the idea.)
40% media hype – let’s not forget the same outfits raving over the iPad want to *sell* their content on it.
30% brand loyalty – Pod people will buy anything with the Apple logo sight unseen on the day of release.
30% merit – it is a well-executed, if pricey, webpad, after all.
On its merits it looks to be good for a million units a year. Add in the hype and it might do double or triple. At least the first year.
After that, all bets are off; hype has a way of (occasionally) creating backlashes after the honeymoon is over.
I think your reasoning is pretty good, but the only other thing that might be a factor is that people don’t really need to search for the iPad on google or yahoo since all they need to do is go to apple which is pretty well known.
When I put in ipad on google trends, there is a clear spike now. It shows up as number 10 on hot searches in canada.
@Felix
If you’re right on the million units, then there’s going to be some very disappointed people.
Analysts seem to be predicting 7 million units in 2010.
I’ll take…
E) Google wants to sell an Android Tablet and now sees itself in direct competition with Apple.
While they probably didn’t avail themselves to the “Google Trends” research method, the stock analysts who follow Apple seem to all agree on one thing: That they should significantly raise their target price for the company’s stock after this past Saturday. (Barrons’ story: http://re-x.me/dQ )
The analysts are estimating anywhere from 4.3 million to 6 million units will be sold this year. And while one analyst went from first estimating 200,000 units would sell in the first day to a last minute estimate that 600,000 units would sell, Apple announced that 300,000 units actually sold. (The analyst issued a mea culpa today.)
Is the iPad just hype? The $180,000,000 in revenues the iPad generated its first day was a little bit more than hot air — even if it didn’t hit Google Trends.
@Paul: I wasn’t predicting sales of 1 Million; I was saying that if the exact same product came from somebody else, minus hype, it would sell a million.
With hype it just might sell 3-4.
7? Almost million a month?
Hype only goes so far.
Who cares. Think for yourself.
Paul,
Have you, personally, held and touched and used an iPad?
It’s hard for me to believe that anyone who has actually used an iPad who is dubious about it.
It’s a marvelous device.
i agree with david. i love mine. i’ve got all sorts of things i’m going to use it for.
How was it with the iPhone?