Wall Street Loves-Hates the iPhone
Our ears are still ringing from the prerelease hype for the Apple iPhone. Wall Street's senses must have been muddled, too. Even before the revolutionary phone was on shelves, analysts put a shine on their crystal balls, divining that Apple would sell anywhere from hundreds of thousands to a cool million of the products in its first few days on the streets. Yet after iPhone carrier AT&T announced a "disappointing" 146,000 activations in its first weekend, Wall Street wanted to hang up the phone on Apple.
Now that the hype and hot air have come down to earth, we see that sales were in line with what Apple predicted, and notably outperformed initial sales of Apple's other success, the iPod. The buzz on Apple's phone came in crystal clear as well. In its first 30 days on the street, the "iphone" query maintained a strong position in the top 100 searches, and even ticked up a precocious 8%.
Of course, there were a few other relevant searches in the iPhone's first month, including "iphone problems" (+4,652%), "unlock iphone" (+6,208%), and "iphone sucks" (+470%). All of which dials in on the fact that a product and a company's value are defined well beyond Wall street's jibber-jabber.
Filed under: Apple Computer, Gadgets, iPhone
iPhone and the Giant Hack
After landing a coveted iPhone, a few geeks weren't content with just pinching the screen over and over. No, they immediately felt the urge to take the device apart and tinker with it. Searches on "iphone hacks" jumped 137% yesterday, propelled by the primal geek urge to tinker.
Related queries on "how to unlock iphone," "iphone teardown," and "iphone crack" showed the determination of those looking to understand the inner workings of the must-have gadget.
With the iPhone at the forefront of hackers' minds, we wondered what else those restless souls were working on. Here are our top 20 hack searches over the last week...
Two final notes following our hack attack...
—How can you hack a book? The Harry Potter Hacker (#3) claims to have secret plot details about the 7th and final chapter in the wizard's saga. Did he glean the info from a computer at Rowling's publisher? Spoiler alert, indeed.
—The PS3 is losing the sales race to the Wii and Xbox 360, but it's the most popular console with hackers. We were surprised to see the gaming machine place so high, mostly 'cause of its high sticker price. Do hackers have the disposable income to risk breaking a console?
Filed under: Technology, Hacks, iPhone
Top 20 iPhone Searches
By now, you're probably tired of the hype over Apple's iPhone. We agree with your exhaustion, so we'll keep this short.
Searches on the device, however, show no signs of fatigue. Buffeted by the waves of Buzz, we dialed up the current top 20 iPhone searches...
top movers
| Rank | Subject | 1-Day Move |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Worst Airports For Delays 2009 | Breakout! |
| 2 | How To Survive A Recession | Breakout! |
| 3 | Ice Cream Calorie Counter | Breakout! |
| 4 | Jayson Williams | Breakout! |
| 5 | Alexandra Kerry | Breakout! |
| 6 | Chaz Bono | 10707% |
| 7 | Kelly Osbourne | 3298% |
| 8 | Jennifer Hudson | 3218% |
| 9 | Nicole Richie | 2075% |
| 10 | Thierry Henry | 1125% |

top leaders
| Rank | Subject | Move | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black Friday | +413 | 1016 |
| 2 | Elizabeth Lambert | -677 | 263 |
| 3 | NFL | +66 | 235 |
| 4 | New Moon | +74 | 213 |
| 5 | Bing | +83 | 209 |
| 6 | Kelly Osbourne | +193 | 199 |
| 7 | Hulu | +7 | 139 |
| 8 | Nicole Richie | +124 | 130 |
what's the buzz?
A subject's buzz score is the percentage of Yahoo! users searching for that subject on a given day, multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read. Weekly leaders are the subjects with the greatest average buzz score for a given week.
For more detailed information, visit our FAQ.