If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed by Apple iPhone stories lately, rest assured you are not imagining it. I’ve been measuring iPhone “Buzz” since the product was introduced last year by simply asking Google News how many stories have been published with the word “iPhone” in them over the past 24 hours. Today, that number hit 23,524 stories in the last day. To put that in perspective, only 11,690 stories referenced the iPhone the day it launched on June 29, 2007, despite crowds lined up for days outside stores. The iPhone frenzy built throughout the month of July 2007 to a peak of 26,848 stories on July 29; it has never peaked so high since (see the figure above for details). But since that time, iPhone buzz has been below 20,000 stories a day — until this week. One might legitimately ask how this compares with other mobile phone platforms, and while I didn’t track those during the last year, thankfully Google Trends did, as shown below. Click on the image below for a larger version. Alternatively, you can look at a current version of the trends at trends.google.com. Trends.google.com trails actual results by somewhere between a few hours and a day, so the current spike in iPhone interest hasn’t quite propagated through yet. But you can bet it’s going to set a new high next week.So what’s the takeaway from these buzz comparisons? I believe that this data:

• Explains today’s Windows Mobile letter from Microsoft. Windows Mobile has been in the market for more than six years, yet Apple is getting nearly 3 times as many stories about the iPhone per day, many of them about an iPhone that isn’t even released yet. Numbers like those drive product marketers crazy — and Microsoft decided it had to do something, even if it was just writing a letter.
• Says consumer hearts and minds are shifting. Today, Research in Motion has many more products in the field, many more carriers signed, and many more customers. But if BlackBerrys satisfy consumers and businesses so well, why are so many more people searching for and writing stories about iPhones?

All I can say is that next week is going to be busy. Why? Because if last year’s trends are any guide, the iPhone buzz hasn’t peaked yet — not by a long shot.