Tweets about the Apple event were down 85% on last year

It might have felt like everyone was talking about the Apple Watch yesterday, but figures from Amobee Brand Intelligence show that people were a whole lot less engaged with this launch than their last press conference on September the 9th.

Here are the stats:

  • During the 1.5 hour presentation, there were 388,710 tweets about Apple.
  • The most talked-about product was the Apple Watch, no surprises there:
    • 132,174 tweets about the Apple Watch
    • 85,815 about the new MacBook
    • 39,555 about the HBO Now service
    • 37,674 about Apple TV.
  • During Apple’s last press conference on September the 9th 2014, there were 718,000 tweets in total. That’s 85% more than there were this time round.
  • The number of tweets about the Apple Watch, the headliner of this launch, actually dropped by 33% compared with last year. Amobee comment that “this reflects the lack of new product news around the Apple Watch” and “speaks to the higher level of popularity around the iPhone line, which also had major announcements on September 9.”
  • There were twice as many negative tweets about Apple TV than there were positive ones. Amobee (and we) think this is because people wanted something new and upgraded, not a $30 price drop on the existing product.
  • The new MacBook (which surprisingly has no ‘Air’, ‘Pro’ etc tag, it’s just ‘MacBook’) was very popular compared with the other products: there were 1.8 positive tweets for every negative one. The retina screen was the biggest talking point, with 5,456 tweets (really?! Not that beautiful gold finish, or the advanced touchpad, or the fact that it weighs under a kilogram?)
  • Battery life on the Apple Watch was a concern again, with 7,964 tweets either grumping about it or commenting on it. Which is fair enough when you’re looking at spending that kind of cash.

We noticed that almost no one was talking about the beginning of the presentation, namely the new healthcare services that Tim Cook introduced. Honestly, we think Apple do themselves a disservice by lumping all their product announcements together: when everyone’s champing at the bit to hear about the Apple Watch, a genuinely positive development like that feels like filler getting in the way of what we really want to see. And imagine how much coverage Apple could have got if they’d split out the MacBook, Apple TV and Apple Watch announcements. Instead, products they’ve worked hard on felt like the trailers before the iMovie.

Holly Brockwell