Apple iPad Is UK's Fourth Most Search Laptop-related Term

A report by internet analyst firm Hitwise found that terms associated with Apple's iPad tablet were the fourth most searched for a laptop model in the UK for the week ending 23rd of January 2010, a few days before the launch of the device itself by Steve Jobs in San Francisco.

Terms like "apple tablet", "apple islate", "itablet", and "ipad" accounted for nearly two percent of all laptop related searches, a 72 percent increase compared to the previous week. Arguably, the launch of the Mac Tablet as the iPad saw the number of searches for the latter rise significantly.

Google trends for example, shows that the term iPad is 50 times more likely to be searched compared to iTablet and 16 times more compared to the iSlate. 

That said, terms associated with the Sony Vaio range, Samsung's popular NC10 netbook and Apple's own entry level Macbook received, in absolute terms, more searches than the iPad although that is likely to have changed by the end of January.

Interestingly, the Apple Tablet group of terms were not the most searched terms for Apple products in the UK (ranked by share of searches).

Instead, iTunes and iPhone were by far, the most popular searches attracting around 27 percent each compared to the tablet's 0.76 percent share of searches.