RIM may still be the market leader when it comes to smartphones, but Waterloo had better watch its back. The iPhone, she’s catching up! The latest survey results from ChangeWave seem to suggest that short-term demand for the iPhone is far outpacing RIM’s BlackBerry offerings – that bodes well for Apple significantly increasing their smartphone market share at RIM’s expense.
Out of the 4,063 people surveyed, a record-setting 14.4% indicated that a smartphone was on their list of planned mobile phone purchases in the next 90 days. More impressively, a whopping 44% of those smartphone buyers plan to plunk down their hard-earned cash for an iPhone, compared with just 23% planning to buy a BlackBerry smartphone in the next 90 days. The Palm Pre is off to a good start with 8% of smartphone customers indicating that the Palm Pre is on their shopping list.
ChangeWave says that iPhone market share has increased one percentage point to account for 25% of the smartphone market. RIM, on the other hand, maintains a solid lead with 41% of the smartphone market tucked under their belt. But, while RIM’s market share remains unchanged since earlier this year, Apple continues to increase its smartphone market share quarter after quarter.
So, what’s to account for the huge spike in iPhone demand? It could be that potential iPhone customers were holding out for better iPhone hardware – which was launched in the iPhone 3GS. It could be that the new iPhone 3.0 OS finally endowed the iPhone with a robust enough feature-set to appease the masses. It might be that increased smartphone awareness has worked to Apple’s advantage… or not.
[Via: ChangeWave]