[kbuchanan]

This may strike some as silly, but before the iPhone was invented, there were ZERO searches for the term "iPhone". (I assume, ha!) By all means, do market analysis, but remember that demand is not static—it can be shaped by what you offer. I co-founded a firm 13 years ago that now employees 50 people that most certainly would have been killed by this type of analysis.

[CrazyStat]

>I co-founded a firm 13 years ago that now employees 50 people that most certainly would have been killed by this type of analysis.

Which is the goal, because these guys aren't looking to build 50-man companies.

[AznHisoka]

of course there would be no searches for a new product name. However there are tons of people searching for “new phone” or “best phones”.

[dragonwriter]

> before the iPhone was invented, there were ZERO searches for the term "iPhone".

Before the Apple iPhone was invented, there were probably some searches for “iPhone” because infogear had a product with that name in 1998, and Cisco (who has purchased infogear) started using it for Linksys products not long before the Apple iPhone launch.

[rchaud]

there was also the Moto ROKR, which was a Jobs-blessed product. But in any case, keyword research isn't just about punching the exact term into a search engine. It's about looking at all the different combinations of terms that would identify user interest in your product.

For the iPhone that would have included search terms for "camera phone quality", "phone with web browsing", "phone with headphone jack" etc. At the time, the vast majority of phones came with a non-standard 2.5mm jack for a wired headset. The concept of listening to music on your phone was alien to all except maybe a couple of Blackberry and Nokia models.

[dragonwriter]

> At the time, the vast majority of phones came with a non-standard 2.5mm jack for a wired headset.

The 2.5mm jack used on pre-iPhone wireless phones wasn't non-standard, it was a pre-existing, widely adopted standard for hands-free phone headsets established initially for cordless phones (the short-range ones with landline base stations) that was adopted by wireless phones because it was what every wired phone headsets on the market used.

[triceratops]

Rumors of an Apple iPhone have been around since at least 2002 (5 years before its release).[1]

Apple trademarked the name in Singapore and the UK that year.

Here's an NYT article from the same year using the name "iPhone"[2]

1. https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/timeline-apple-iphon...

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/19/business/apple-s-chief-in...

[sweeneyrod]

It seems like the authors made the unspoken assumption that the product would not significantly embiggen the market. That seems very reasonable in this case.