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Apple iPhone 4S 16Gb White Factory unlocked MD237LL/A

According to a recent study conducted by ChangeWave Research, both Apple and Samsung are fast establishing themselves as really strong players in the smartphone market. This is at least true for the US markets and we all know how popular the iPhone 4S is right now even though it was released quite a few months back now.

The analysts reached this conclusion after going through the results of a regular buyer poll that it conducts amongst 4000 buyers. It is true that the sampling is a small one but it still reflects change and evolution of brand perception over time because it is conducted regularly.

The poll’s December 2011 results show that out of all the consumers who were polled and who were planning to buy a handset during Q1 2012 — 13% wanted buy a Samsung handset (Android in most likelihood) and a 54% majority wanted to go for an Apple product i.e. an iPhone. And if you think that is a great portion, it is actually a downfall for Apple.

During the same poll in September, a massive 65% people had said that they are planning to buy an iPhone during the last quarter of the year. This fall however does not reflect negatively Apple’s popularity in anyway amongst smartphone users. According to ChangeWave this is a common phenomenon for the iPhone where there’s always a survey to survey drop in demand as the time span since launch increases every time. Interest is sure to plunge after all the early adopters and then all the holiday buyers have made their purchases.

But this time there’s an exception to this rule. Apple has apparently never dominated buyer opinions this much beyond the initial two months after a major launch. In comparison, Samsung did see a growth but it was of only 5% from September’s figures to December’s 13%.

Other companies also figured on the polls but they had a very small slice of the pie. Motorola figured in the charts and they even rose a little in the opinions from September to December but they were still at a meager 7% at the end of 2011. HTC was also in single digits in September at just 6% but surprisingly their share of planned buying in December fell to just 3%. That at least explains why HTC has not been faring well of late.

RIM is clearly dying a slow and steady death right now. In September their share of the planned buying pie was just 3% and at the end of 2011 in the December poll their share fell to 2%. RIM also fared very poorly amongst the satisfaction surveys, with only 22% BlackBerry users giving a “very good” feedback in the satisfaction area in the ChangeWave poll.

To put it in to perspective, the same rating for the iPhone was a whopping 75% amongst its users. Apple once again held the highest level of approval. Samsung and HTC followed close behind with 47% of their respective user bases rating their user satisfaction as “very good”.