A lot of the iPhone launch coverage last week included references to the alternatives to Apple’s latest mobile phone. It looks like the competitor that benefited most from these comparisons in Britain was Blackberry – ironic, considering that many are touting the new 3G iPhone as a ‘blackberry-killer’. As you can see from the table chart below, UK Internet searches for ‘blackberry’ reached their highest ever level last week.

Looking at the search term suggestions for ‘blackberry’, the most popular model is the new Bold, which has overtaken the Pearl and Curve in the public affections. When we were publishing our lists of the most searched for mobile phones last Christmas, one of the things that struck me was how far Blackberries fell down the list. It’s interesting to see how the press coverage and marketing surrounding the Bold has primarily driven searches for the parent brand, rather than the specific model. This lack of search for particular models seems to be a particular ‘problem’ for Blackberry.

As you can see from the table below, 16.6% of people searching for a term containing the word ‘blackberry’ over the last 4 weeks just used the basic parent term, while 2.19% searched specifically for ‘blackberry bold’. These figures are different for other major manufacturers, which do much better from specific models. For LG, the parent brand accounts for 7.13%, with the most popular individual model ‘lg viewty’ managing 4.42%; for Samsung the respective figures are 7.97% and 2.9% (‘samsung soul’); while Nokia’s are 9.49% and 2.66% (‘nokia n95’).

So how do searches for these ‘iPhone-killers’ stand up against the monster itself? As the chart below illustrates, the Samsung Soul has been doing well, while the Nokia N95 and LG Viewty both got a boost last week. In addition to the Blackberry Bold, the other rising star is the HTC Touch Diamond. However, they all fell far behind the iPhone last week. If you’re interested in seeing how long this peak lasts, keep an eye on the blog. Next month we’ll be reinstating our hot gadgets list, which will include tracking of the top mobile phone models.

Robin Goad

Robin Goad is Research Director, Hitwise UK. This piece was originally published on Hitwise analyst blog here.