CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple’s annual Special Event on Wednesday was streamed live to millions of people worldwide, and this year Pornhub’s statisticians were ready to capture all the excitement through data.
Pornhub researchers for the 2016 and 2017 Apple events relied on hourly traffic from Google Analytics, but this year statisticians captured actual pageviews as they occurred on the company’s servers so they could break down traffic changes by the minute.
Researchers then compared pageviews during each minute of the event to the exact same time on the three previous Wednesdays to find the percent change from average.
Pornhub researchers said the resulting data reveals that people using Apple devices are far more interested in seeing Apple’s latest tech compared to people using non-Apple devices. During the event, traffic from Apple iOS devices dropped an average of -7 percent while only -2.1 percent on non-Apple devices (the majority of which are Android based).
“By the minute we can see what parts of the event were more likely to draw in viewers (and take them away from Pornhub),” Pornhub researchers said. “As the event began at 1 p.m. (EDT), Pornhub’s traffic dipped by nearly -10 percent on Apple devices and -3.7 percent on non-Apple. The first part of the show focused on the new Apple Watch, which seems to have had less impact on Pornhub’s traffic. Perhaps those not interested in wearables figured they had 10 minutes to spend on Pornhub while they waited to see the new iPhones.
“As the Apple event switched to the big iPhone reveal, Pornhub’s pageviews dropped by -11.3% on Apple devices and -4.4 percent on Android,” researchers said. “Traffic remained below average over the next 40 minutes as the shiny new phones and their fancy new processors were pitched. Talk of the iPhone XS supporting dual SIMs (a long-time exclusive of Android devices) seems to have peaked the interested of some non-Apple users.
“As the discussion turned to Apple’s environmental impact, traffic again returned to Pornhub briefly, then dropped again as soon as the new colorful iPhone XR models were revealed. This caused pageviews from Apple based devices to dip as much as -11.5 percent.
“As the live event wrapped up, traffic steadily returned to Pornhub. While non-Apple users didn’t seem particularly impacted, we found that post-event traffic from Apple devices was well above average following the event,” researchers said.