What Google Insight tells us about Kindle vs iSlate
I’ll admit it. I’m a little bit addicted to Google Analytics. But particularly to Google Insight. If you haven’t played around with it yet, have a go. It’s free and available to everyone.
Let me tell you why it’s great. Google Insight measures what people are searching for. So in a way, it’s a really organic guage of people’s interest level in a certain subject.
In my opinion, it’s more reliable than consumer insight surveys since it’s not a measure of what people will admit they are interested in (to themselves, or to a researcher), but of what they are actually interested in. In other words, it counteracts the oldest of consumer research problems – of cognitive dissonance.
The one drawback of Google Insight that comes to mind is that it’s not subtle. It doesn’t, for example, differentiate between people who are interested in the “iSlate” in a vaguely curious way from those who are interested in a ready-to-buy type way. Unless, I suppose you run a search on “buy iSlate” or “iSlate cost”.
Given this morning’s apparently game-changing announcement that Amazon plan to open the Kindle up to third-party apps, I thought I’d take a look to see how the “iSlate” and the “Kindle” stack up in terms of search engine interest.
It seems that, somewhat unsuprisingly, interest in the Kindle last year was charging ahead, probably largely due to the fact that it was actually on sale (i.e. more than a rumour!), and aided by high profile announcements such as the Kindle international launch, and the fact that the Apple tablet had no agreed name. So far, so predictable.
Then finally, January this year, Apple confirms a date and searches for “apple tablet” peak – only a few points less than the Kindle. Add in people searching for “iSlate” and the amount of people interested in the rumoured tablet is far greater than the Kindle. Does this give any indication as to how the iSlate will do?
Certainly Google Insight has proved a good predictor for the sales patterns of the iPhone and the iPod.
As shoutmeloud.com reports,
It took the Apple iPod around 17 quarters to have sold 30 million units whereas it took only 10 quarters for the iPhone.
We can see the steep uplift in iPhone purchasing mirrored by the steep interest rise – interest in “iPhone” appears to take off much quicker than interest in “iPod” (although it is hard to compare this like for like with the level of interest in iPods at their inception – since Google Insight only goes back to 2004.)
Another interesting thing the graph shows us – the steep peaks in iPod interest occur every year at Christmas, suggesting the majority of iPods are given as gifts. Interest in iPhones on the other hand mainly peaks in July 08 – when iPhone 3G was announced – and June 09 – when the 3GS was released.
On first glance, interest in the Kindle seems to work the same way as the iPhone, with peaks at the point of big press releases, but the highest peak yet was at Christmas 2009, which also corresponds with what was probably their biggest sales peak. iPhones are much harder to gift, due to their reliance on contracts or top-ups, but not impossible. If the main purchasers of Kindles are gifters, maybe the Kindle is the iPod of the book world, and the tablet the iPhone?
Following this morning’s apparently game-changing announcement that Amazon will open up their platform to 3rd party app developers, publishers might be tempted to abandon any iPhone plans and diversify, for fear of eggs & basket syndrome. But, before we throw those prototype iphone apps on the fire, lets maybe take a look at one last search chart…
Tomorrow: Can Google analytics predict the winner of Celebrity Big Brother? Am I joking? Come back to find out…
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