iPhone demand still 'incredibly strong,' but declining, study finds

iPhone demand is still high.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple's iPhone is still in high demand among future smartphone buyers, a new survey has found.


According to ChangeWave Research, which conducted a survey of 4,000 North American consumers last month, 54 percent of those who plan to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days will choose the iPhone. Samsung smartphones come in second place in the ChangeWave survey, earning 13 percent share. Motorola and HTC follow with 7 percent and 3 percent of consumers planning to buy devices from those companies, respectively.

"Apple has never dominated smartphone planned buying to this extent more than two months after a major new release," ChangeWave said in a statement, referencing the iPhone 4S. The research firm went on to say that iPhone demand is "incredibly strong" right now.

However, demand for Apple's iPhone is on the decline. Back in September, ChangeWave found that 65 percent of consumers were planning to buy an iPhone by the end of 2011--11 points higher than now. Meanwhile, demand for Samsung smartphones has increased 8 percent from the 5 percent it stood at in September.

So, why is Samsung's market appeal on the rise? According to ChangeWave, it's due mainly to the recently launched Galaxy Nexus. That device, which boasts Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and comes with a 4.65-inch display, is Samsung's flagship device right now, and arguably the best iPhone competitor the company offers.

When it comes to satisfaction, however, the divide between Apple's and Samsung's handsets is quite large, ChangeWave found. A whopping 75 percent of iPhone owners say they are "very satisfied" with their smartphones, compared to just 47 percent of Samsung smartphone owners. BlackBerry owners were least likely to be "very satisfied," with 22 percent saying they feel that way about their handsets.

Smartphone demand as of December 2011.

(Credit: ChangeWave Research)

As Apple and Samsung continue to battle it out on store shelves, the companies are also heavily engaged in lawsuits all over the world. From Australia to Europe to the U.S., each company has argued that the other violates patents in both smartphones and tablets. So far, however, neither side has been able to win a decisive victory.


Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has covered everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don writes product reviews for InformationWeek and is a regular contributor to Processor Magazine.

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XP still top OS, but Windows 7 hot on its trail

NetApplications' trending for desktop OS share.
(Credit: NetApplications)
Windows XP is still the dominant OS worldwide after more than 10 years, but Windows 7 continues to narrow the gap.
XP ended last year with a 46 percent slice of the OS market, according to December data from NetApplications. Although impressive after a decade, that number proved a hefty drop in use for XP, which kicked off 2011 with a 55 percent share and has fallen each month since then.
On the upswing, Windows 7 rang out the year with almost 37 percent of the market, a solid gain from 22 percent last January and further proof of its ongoing monthly growth.
In third place was Windows Vista, which dropped to 8 percent from more than 11 percent at the start of 2011.
Microsoft has been on a tear lately trying to convince companies and consumers alike to make the leap to Windows 7.
The company has stressed that support for Windows XP will end in April 2014, making sure to give IT departments enough time to migrate their users to the latest version of Windows.
Microsoft has even gone so far as to advise enterprises still on XP not to wait for Windows 8 and instead plan the switch to Windows 7 now.
Meanwhile, over in the land of Apple, Mac OS X grabbed almost 6 percent of the operating system market last month. OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was the leading flavor with a 3 percent share, though it has gradually fallen in usage. Ending the year with a 2 percent share, OS X 10.7 Lion has risen in popularity since its release last summer.
And still carving out a niche among its faithful users, Linux accounted for almost 1.5 percent of the OS market in December.


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Nokia Lumia 800 still selling greatly, in some places at least

The Nokia Q4 report will be one of the most interesting things to look forward to at the start of next year. The company took a huge gamble by betting on Windows Phone for their smartphone portfolio and the holiday season sales should show if it will pay off.
And even though the quarter that saw the market release of Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 is nearing its end it's still really hard to tell if they are being well received by the market or not. We are getting all kinds of reports about their sales, so we are not even sure what to expect in the end.
For example, according to the survey done by mobile comparison shopping site MobilesPlease, the Lumia 800 accounted for a mere 0.17% of the UK smartphone sales in November. That's close to 100 less than the market share of the most popular phone according to the survey - Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II.
However, in the Lumia 800 appears to still be doing greatly in the Netherlands. The smartphone was the second best-selling device on KPN Netherlands (the country's largest carrier) at the end of November, than rose to first place at the start of this month and has been staying there ever since.
The O2 Germany most popular phones chart tells a similar story, with the Nokia Lumia 800 occupying the first spot for quite some time now. Over at T-Mobile Germany the Lumia 800 ranks 6th, behind three of the iPhone 4S versions, the black Galaxy S II and the black Galaxy S Plus.
As we already told you, we won't know the truth before the actual results are published, but for the sake of a more competitive market, we are keeping our fingers crossed the Lumia duo will turn out a success.


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