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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
Analyst Weblog
New Amazon Kindle searches spike to challenge iPad mini
September 02, 2010
September has only just begun and already people are talking about Christmas. Planning committees are being assembled to organise the office Christmas Party, high street retailers are bringing out decorations and online gossip has turned to the hottest gifts for the festive season.
One of the hotly tipped gifts for Christmas 2010 is Amazon’s latest e-reader, better known as the Kindle 3. Traditional “dead tree books” are never going to be eradicated completely, but ebooks are starting to hit the mainstream. In the last year, generic searches for e-readers have doubled, while Kindle-related searches have increased eight fold.
With the smaller, sleeker and cheaper Kindle 3 now available Amazon look set to further capitalise on their position as a market leader in the e-reader market.
As with many gadgets, search behaviour favours branded search terms rather than generic terms. Searches for branded terms search as ‘sony reader’ and ‘amazon kindle’ have always been more popular than ‘ebook’. What’s interesting to note from the above chart is the rise in popularity of Kindle-related search terms against other branded terms. In the last month searches for Kindles have never been higher. Amazon’s product is pulling away from the competition, where previously the volume of searches has been roughly even between Kindles and other e-readers.
While the Amazon Kindle has a competitive edge over other similar products, the real brand war will be fought between Amazon and Apple. The iPad is more than an e-reader but it is also a lot more expensive than the Kindle and its peers. With Amazon’s aggressive pricing strategy the Kindle 3 could provide a challenge to Apple’s successful iPad.
A couple of weeks ago Sky News reported that Apple was planning a new ‘iPad mini’ to be launched in time for Christmas. The ‘iPad mini’ is rumoured to have a seven inch screen, much closer to the new Kindle’s six inch reading screen. Searches for both ‘ipad mini’ and ‘kindle 3’ have spiked since the end of July but the online popular vote seems to be with the Kindle, as in the last week searches spiked for ‘kindle 3’ while there was a direct correlation in a drop in searches for ‘ipad mini’.
Could the new Kindle be the iPad killer? Amazon certainly seem to think so, reporting that the Kindle 3 has been selling faster than any of its previous incarnations, according to Mashable. Apple however, sold its first million iPads in 28 days, less than half the time it took to sell its first million iPhones. It is still worth noting that searches for iPads are 300% higher than searches for Kindles.
Amazon have their work cut out for them if they intend to threaten Apple’s dominance - follow us on Twitter to keep up to date with the latest analysis.
Posted by Robin Goad at 09:50 AM
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In Categories Apple | Christmas | Gadgets | Shopping and Classifieds
Surge in searches for fixed rate mortgages
August 27, 2010
The number of internet searches for fixed rate mortgages soared between April – June 2010 (Q2) compared to the same time period last year, with searches for the term ‘fixed rate mortgages 10 years’ up almost ten fold over the period. Searches for ‘fixed rate mortgages 5 years’ increased seven fold, while searches for ‘tracker mortgages’ only saw an increase of 16%, indicating that many consumers are expecting interest rates to rise over the medium term.
The table below details the annual increases in UK and US searches for portfolios of key finance / economic indicator terms.
Our analysis also reveals searches for houses for sale rose by a quarter between April – June 2009 (Q2), compared to the same time last year, and searches for properties for rent experienced a similar increase – up 22% compared to a year ago. These trends indicate strong buyer interest combined with improved affordability due to the low interest rate environment. The fact that house prices remain below pre-recession levels gives buyers a strong incentive to enter the market ahead of any possible interest rate rises.
Experian’s Insight Index also analysed searches for other personal finance products, and revealed searches for loans fell by 14% between April and June this year, compared to the same time period last year. Online searches for terms like ‘cheap loans’ and ‘low interest loans’ also saw declines of 16% and 47% respectively. The latest data released by the Bank of England confirms that the number of unsecured loans issued has fallen.
Credit cards however continued to rise in popularity, with online searches for ‘credit cards with zero interest’ up by 511% this quarter compared to this time last year. However, searches relating to credit card deals with rewards all experienced a decline in online searches, suggesting consumers are – for the time being - less focused on perks:
• Searches for ‘credit card airmiles’ fell by 24.03% between April – June 2010 compared to same time period in 2009
• Searches for ‘credit card rewards’ fell by 12.12% between April – June 2010 compared to same time period in 2009
• Searches for ‘credit card cashback’ experienced a fall of 5.02% between April – June 2010 compared to same time period in 2009
Experian’s Insight Index also highlights key differences between UK and US online searches. The US experienced a fall of 1% in searches for property for sale between April – June 2010 compared to the same period in 2009. However searches for ‘property for rent’ saw a huge increase of 104% in Q2. US consumers, like those in the UK, were less interested in searching for the term ‘mortgages’ compared to last year with a fall of 20% this quarter compared to April – June 2009.
Posted by Robin Goad at 01:47 PM
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In Categories Economy | Experian | Financial Services | Property | Search
The Physio Room: content is king
August 24, 2010
Looking through this week’s list of fast moving websites, one that jumped out at me was The Physio Room, which last week ranked 15th in our Health and Medical category and was also the 12th most popular Sport and Fitness retailer. As the chart below illustrates, traffic to the site has increased five-fold over the last month.
When I looked to see where the traffic was coming from, I was surprised by the chart below. As you would expect, Google UK sends the most traffic to the site, but the second biggest source of visits, currently accounting for a fifth of all traffic, is Telegraph Fantasy football. And the reason? The Physio Room publishes a list of all the current injuries to Premier League footballers – clearly a useful resource for fantasy football players, and a great example of a site making imaginative use of content to attract visitors.
Posted by Robin Goad at 05:14 PM
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In Categories Football | Health | News and Media | Retail | Shopping and Classifieds | Sport
1 in every 100 UK Internet searches Sky Sports related
August 16, 2010
Although the lower leagues had already kicked off earlier in the month, the football season truly got underway this weekend with the first Barclays Premier League matches. As you would expect, UK Internet visits to key football related websites increased significantly last week: the Official Fantasy Premier League site by 186%, Sky Sports by 15%. There was a 12% increase in traffic to BBC Sport but, as the table below illustrates, it has yet to reach the same level for traffic it experienced during the World Cup.
All of the three sites mentioned above ranked amongst the top 100 most visited in the UK last week, with BBC Sport in 13th position and Sky Sports at number 15. Joining them in the top 100, in 70th position, was the Sky Digital TV Shop, the place where people go to either purchase Sky TV or upgrade their packages (we have only recently categorised this site within Hitwise, hence the lack of historical data in the chart above). The site is most popular in the North East, although Walsall is the individual postal area that that currently most over-indexes in terms of traffic. This perhaps reflects the fact that there are four teams from West Midlands (Aston Villa, West Brom, Birmingham City, Wolves) competing in the top flight of English football this season - the first time this has happened for 27 years.
The main driver for all this traffic was clearly the demand for the Sky Sports channels, and searches for the terms ‘sky sports’ and ‘sky sports football’ increased by 38% and 22% respectively last week. These were the two most popular of 3,700 different ways in which people searched for the channels last week. Aggregating all of these together using our new broad matching tool, we can see that all of these variations accounted for 1% of all UK searches last week – i.e. 1 in every 100 searches in the UK was related to Sky Sports.
Posted by Robin Goad at 10:30 AM
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In Categories BBC | Demographics | Fast moving search terms | Football | Postal Areas data | Search | Sport | TV | World Cup 2010
