Liveblog Data: Apple vs. Microsoft

Evan Hansen, at Wired Gadget Lab:

About 11,000 people read our Microsoft liveblog coverage Monday morning in just over an hour. By contrast, our liveblog coverage of Apple’s iPhone 5 launch in September brought in nearly 360,000 visits in a hour, and an Apple gathering last week to announce the new iPad mini and other products (an event that Apple also livestreamed) drew just over 75,000 readers.

Interesting numbers. A few factors work against Microsoft here. People don’t expect surprises at events like Monday’s Windows Phone 8 announcement. That’s the nature of Microsoft’s business model — we already know what Windows Phone 8 is because they’ve had to share it to get handset partners on board. Plus, the truth is simply that Windows Phone hasn’t caught on.

As for the difference in the numbers for the two Apple events, I wonder how much of the drop-off was because Apple offered a live video stream for the iPad Mini event, and did not for the iPhone 5 one.

★ Tuesday, 30 October 2012