The Apple iPhone SE recently went on sale in India. The 2020 iPhone SE was unveiled globally in April, and unlike past iPhone reveals, the iPhone SE 2020 was released through a regular press release. Perhaps the company did not see the merit in a big launch event given the current state of affairs.
But despite the rather down-to-earth approach, the iPhone SE 2020 was still the most popular phone at the time of its launch. According to data collected by iPrice Group, the new iPhone SE dominated search trends beyond the tech sector, and for a moment, was even able to steal netizens’ attention from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The e-commerce aggregator analysed search data on Google in 17 different countries and regions, including seven countries with the most cases of COVID-19, including India, Thailand, Vietnam, and Brazil.
iPrice discovered that concerns and curiosity about the coronavirus for all countries surveyed dropped significantly in April, just as rumours about the iPhone SE started to gain strength.
The analysis shows that searches worldwide for keywords such as ‘COVID-19’, ‘COVID’, and ‘coronavirus’ went down by 46 percent compared to its peak in late April as Apple’s new iPhone began shipping.
In countries with the highest number of active cases like the United States, Italy, and the United Kingdom, the proportion of searches for coronavirus keywords had decreased by 76 percent, 43 percent, and 47 percent respectively.
iPrice noted that the rapid increase in iPhone searches could be attributed to the fact that people in these countries were looking for a distraction. And shopping for consumer electronics turns out to be an extremely popular choice.
iPrice’s research showed that when people stopped searching for COVID-19, they started searching for the iPhone SE instead.
Within 30 days of April, the proportion of searches for iPhone keywords went up by 17 percent worldwide. This trend was most evident in developing countries, presumably because of the iPhone SE’s low-price tag, by iPhone standards.
In seven developing countries, interests for iPhone keywords shot up by 89 percent immediately after the announcement about the phone was made in those countries.
Two days after the new iPhone SE announcement, India, Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia saw the proportion of searches for iPhone increased by 133 percent, 178 percent, 103 percent, and 104 percent, respectively.
In Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey, Thailand, and Hong Kong, searches for the iPhone SE surpassed that of the coronavirus. The data in iPrice’s study suggests that announcing a new smartphone amid a prolonged crisis might not be such a bad idea.
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