Hi-res version of ‘iphone’ results
Sprint’s Instinct is supposed to be one of the better iPhone pretenders. Biggs lauded its user interface while simultaneously panning other n’er do wells for their haphazard use of haptic or multitouch-for-multitouch’s sake. So you would think the phone, which is, nearest I can tell, one of the standouts at this year’s CTIA, would have more than a handful of column inches devoted to it.
Doesn’t appear to be the case, a Lexis Nexis (Academic) search reveals.
Compare it to the iPhone, which was officially unveiled January 9, 2007 at MacWorld. Within 24 hours, as the screenshot above shows, some 409 articles, press releases and the like mention “iPhone” in the Nexis database (under the US Newspapers and Wires category).
The Instinct, 24 hours after its April 1, 2008 debut, has a grand total of 16 articles. Twenty-five times fewer articles in the same time frame.
Hi-res version of ‘sprint instinct’ results
I’m no iPhone apologist—frequent readers know I’m far more interested in today’s Champions League results than whether or not the iPhone/Instinct outsells the Instinct/iPhone—and this idea came to me while sitting in class a few minutes ago, so it’s not like I’m out to “get” the Instinct or anything, just an observation more than anything else. (Run on sentences, ftw.) But if Sprint truly wants the Instinct to resurrect its shrinking business, as detailed in BusinessWeek today, it may want to do a better job of marketing it.
The iPhone was introduced while CES was still going on last year, and pretty much every one of my friends and co-workers at CES (the Giz guys, other bloggers, the magazine people I know, etc.) knew CES was finished then and there. Like, the iPhone debuted and destroyed CES’ reason for being. Consumer technology? That’s the consumer technology for the foreseeable future, way out in San Francisco while we’re shuffling around the Las Vegas convention center.
Instinct came out yesterday at a cellphone conference. If Sprint was so adamant (confident?) about the phone, it at least could have rented out some floor space in NY or SF a couple days before or after CTIA to say, “OK, this is was we have.” As it stands, the phone is just one of many. And no one’s writing about it.