Smartphones are about to undergo their biggest boom yet. According to a new survey released Wednesday from ChangeWave, the next 90 days will see “the most extensive growth in consumer smartphone sales” that the market researcher has ever recorded.
The survey of 4,028 customers found that 16.4 percent are planning on buying a smartphone in the next three months. This compares with 10.8 percent when the survey was last conducted in March. ChangeWave said the big leap forward is being driven by sales of Apple’s iPhone and HTC’s Android smartphones, to the detriment of Motorola and Research In Motion.
RIM ‘The Biggest Loser’
An impressive 52 percent of respondents who will be buying a smartphone in the next 90 days will choose an iPhone. This huge leap since the previous survey in March — an increase of 21 percent — is largely driven by the demand for Apple’s new iPhone 4, which was released in June.
HTC phones were the other big choice. Seven percent more respondents said they were going to choose a HTC smartphone than in the previous survey, bringing the figure to 19 percent. Motorola declined to 9 percent from 16 percent as the choice of buyers, and RIM plunged to 6 percent from 14 percent. The market researcher described RIM as “the biggest loser.”
ChangeWave pointed out that Motorola peaked in the last survey in March at 16 percent, and at 13 percent in the previous survey in December, so the market demand for Android appears to be shifting from Motorola to HTC’s Droid Incredible, EVO 4G, and other models. However, Motorola could fight its way back up with the new Droid X, which went on sale Thursday.
Palm, which is now owned by Hewlett-Packard and expected to undergo another metamorphosis, is registering under one percent in the survey of buyers’…