Executive Briefing
Apple’s iPhone and Watch event: What matters
And the key thing that went missing.
By Dan Frommer on Wednesday, September 11, 2019 at 10:30 pm
Now more than 20 years in to paying close attention to Apple keynote events, it’s always interesting to find new evidence of just how big they’ve become.
Apple generally doesn’t share information about how popular its keynote livestreams are, even after it has spent the last several years stoking the audience with Twitter-based reminder campaigns.
But yesterday the company also streamed its iPhone 11 event on YouTube for the first time. And there alone, almost 2 million people were watching concurrently. That’s on top of however many were watching Apple’s official stream — potentially an equal or greater number. That’s a lot!
The full archived video also now has 2 million views on YouTube, an Apple Event in a flash highlight reel has 13 million, an iPhone 11 video has 14 million, and an iPhone 11 Pro video has 10 million. Pity the Apple Watch Series 5, with just 1.5 million views.
I think of this whenever I hear dated thinking about “normal users” versus “geeks,” or some other similarly phrased dichotomy.
Of course, different people have different levels of technical knowledge, just as they would about any topic. But the iPhone and Apple ecosystem is more mainstream than many realize. After hundreds of millions of people have used iPhones for hours per day for a decade, it makes sense.
The Apple Event itself is now cemented in popular culture. Really.
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