iPhone Air – What does the iPhone 6 have in common with Bigfoot?

If you simply want to know all the latest about the next iPhone then head over to our more traditional roundup of iPhone 6 price, specs, release date rumours.

Time for a little navel-gazing on our part. The phrase 'iPhone 6' has been an important one to technology journalists for a couple of years now. As far back as 2012, as soon as the iPhone 5 was launched back, speculation immediately began as to what form the iPhone 6 would take.

Some might argue that journalists were responsible for this, but today's search-driven internet doesn't really work that way. Instead, people around the world starting typing 'iPhone 6' into Google search to see if anyone knew anything about the next handset. At first it was a trickle but soon it grew into a torrent of searches.

We know this because last month around 823,000 people in the UK searched for iPhone 6 and over 12,000,000 people did so worldwide. Websites get these figures, largely thanks to Google's own Keyword Planner tool; this is designed to sell advertising around search terms, Google's main income stream, but also provides fascinating insights into what people are searching for. Websites then react by writing more iPhone 6 news stories to cater for demand – in exactly the same way the Daily Mail writes endless celebrity stories.

The iPhone 6 is the celebrity cellulite story of the tech world

iPhone 6 traffic has been running high for some time too, many Google searchers presumed it would be the name of the 2013 handset following on from the iPhone 5. When that turned out, predictably, to be the iPhone 5S, the term then quickly morphed to represent that of the upcoming 2014 handset.

And to this day it remains consistently the most important keyword in online tech journalism, a brilliant example of the modern internet, and of the 'tail wagging the dog'. There were a handful of months where it was surpassed by the launch of the much-awaited Xbox One and PS4, devices fans had waited a whopping seven years for, but excepting that iPhone 6 remains the number one driver of traffic to many tech sites worldwide.

Pretty impressive for a device that not only doesn't exist but which may never exist.

The problem Apple has is excessive 'sequelisation' a phenomenon where the perception of a product's worth is degraded by increasingly high numbers. A popular example being the creative slump of Hollywood in the late eighties, when huge numbers of sequels were produced, such as 1989's Police Academy 6: City Under Siege. Now we're not likening the next iPhone to that risible piece of cinema, but the same rule applies, if the number gets too high, it looks like you've run out of ideas.

Whatever it may be called, the new iPhone might look something like this

Apple has long been criticised for not producing a larger-screened handset to compete with the ever-growing displays on flagship Android smartphones, which are all over 5in diagonally. A bigger screen is not only nicer to look at, it also provides more space behind it to spread out the various components, which results in phones that while larger to look at, are actually considerably slimmer, something that consumers value highly.

With the iPad recently being reborn as the slinkier and lighter iPad Air. Our bet is that the iPhone too will undergo a naming revamp, possibly the iPhone Air, possibly not. It will be brave for Apple to move away from a numbering system that has served it so well, but the company would look increasing bereft of ideas to continue with it.

That would make iPhone 6, alongside possibly the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, one of the most searched things that never actually existed. Which would still put it one step ahead of Police Academy 6, something that sadly does exist but that hardly anyone ever searches for.

< Bigfoot remains popular to this day, with 301,000 searches every month