ChangeWave: iPhone Demand Down But Still Dominant

This week the folks at ChangeWave have shown off their quarterly consumer smartphone report, showing none other than Samsung as the big winner as far as market growth goes in the USA. This North American report covers the quarter leading up to the beginning of 2013, with the last quarter reported being December of 2012. This report asks several key questions, the main one being if those polled plan on purchasing a smart phone in the next 90 days, and if so, which one they'll get.

This survey showed two things for Apple – the first of them being that after the iPhone 5 was released in 2012, the first analysis ChangeWave did showed that consumer demand was up to a staggering 71%. This percentage is, again, the amount of people polled who said they planned on purchasing a smartphone (and iPhone in this case) in the 90 days after they'd been polled. The second thing this chart reveals is that in the most recent study, that being December of 2012, the percentage for those looking to buy an iPhone in the next 90 days had fallen to 50%.

For Samsung the story is ever-so-slightly different. In that the quarter during their release of their hero phone (the Samsung Galaxy S III) they had higher demand than the quarter afterward, Samsung is quite similar to Apple. The percentages are quite different – 19% market penetration down to 13% rather than 71% down to 50%, but the trend is still there. Samsung's most recent quarter shows the demand for Samsung smartphones to be back up to 21%, this just one quarter after their fall to 13%.

Also revealed in the report ChangeWave showed off this week is a showing of how satisfied mobile OS users were with their chosen operating system. This set of findings showed Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 to rise over Android in the charts with 54% of users describing themselves as "Very Satisfied." This compares to Android's 48% – Apple's iOS collected 71% of respondents saying they were Very Satisfied, placing them well ahead of the pack.

[via 451 Research (ChangeWave)]