Yesterday was the four-year anniversary of my iPhone Xs Max Exit Review. I gave it a read this morning since I may be on the verge of writing a new iPhone exit review (👀) and one of my footnotes caught my attention.

"Just glancing at MKBHD’s top 20 videos (out of 1,464), seven of them are iPhone specific. They total a cool 84 million views. Also, his most viewed video is about the Game Boy with 39 million views. The second most viewed has 23 million and is about the first Samsung Fold."

I was curious how much the top 20 had changed in four years. Color me surprised that a one-week-old video entered the top three.12

260917_MKBHD_Top 3

I think the iPhone Duo is going to do just fine.

Looking a bit deeper at the top 20, half of the videos are related to Apple with seven being focused on the iPhone. Those seven iPhone videos tally up to 118 million views, which is about a 40 percent increase in four years. Out of those seven iPhone videos, five of them have come out within the last four years. Here they are from lowest to highest view count:

The poor iPhone 16 is sitting in 31st place... What this little list tells me though is that the immediate impressions after the event are far more popular than the review a week or so later. The fervor of the September iPhone event is unstoppable. It makes me wonder how popular the assumed spring event for the non-Pro iPhones will be in comparison.

When looking at the rest of the top 20 lineup, two are about the Apple Vision Pro, four are Tesla-focused, and three are foldable-focused. Here are the folding videos, bottom to top:

Besides the Duo, there are no videos about the folds or flips in the top 20 since Samsung's foray into the form factor seven years ago. The two non-Duo videos are an unboxing and an explanation about the plastic screen layer that killed the Galaxy Fold if peeled off.3

Scrolling way down the list, we see where folding phones fall in the top video hierarchy. The next folding phone video is about the iPhone Duo. That's right. A follow-up video on the Duo from four days ago is sitting at slot 36. Just two slots later is a video on the folding phone you all love—Royole FlexPai! After a sketchy Pablo Escobar phone and the Galaxy Fold 1.1, we finally get a non-Chinese, non-Samsung folding phone in slot 119 with the Moto RAZR. Google enters the list at 140.

Apple enters the category and in a week it blows past every other folding video.

Now, this doesn't translate to sales and folding phones taking over the entire smartphone market, but it does highlight a few things to me about tech and the viewers of Marques' channel.

  1. Apple is the most popular brand Marques talks about.
  2. New products and form factors from Apple are the most popular Apple videos.
  3. When the iPhone comes in a new form, watch out.

Views on YouTube are not direct sales though. They are a live pulse on curiosity and popularity. While I do expect the Duo to sell out instantly, I wager that's more early adopters and speculated low production numbers. John Gruber pondered the form factor's mass appeal:

"Given the design brief of creating a book-shaped foldable phone, I feel quite certain already that Apple has nailed it with the Duo. But having only seen the keynote spiel and poked around with one in hand for a few minutes Wednesday afternoon, I think it remains an open question whether a book-shaped foldable phone is a good idea in the first place. Folks from Apple who have actually spent time carrying the Duo seem genuinely enthused. I remain highly skeptical about its appeal for me personally, and somewhat skeptical about its appeal broadly. That’s OK if it’s not suited for me, but is suited for many (but not most) people. No one in the keynote described the iPhone Duo as the future of iPhone, like they did when introducing the iPhone X in 2017. I just wonder if the fundamental idea appeals to all that many people at all. We’ll find out starting in late October."

When we consider that Apple is actually marketing the Duo, the reactions in the media, and then combine those with Marques' views, I think the Duo will be a hit.

But not more popular than the Game Boy.

Footnotes

  1. For posterity, here are Marques' top 21* videos today. I can't help that YouTube only displays videos three thumbnails wide. ↩

  2. I suspect the Duo impressions video will be in second place before too long. ↩

  3. I completely forgot that Samsung delayed the Fold last minute to address the hyper sensitive display killing the phone. The revision would come out some five months later. ↩