June Survey: Apple and HTC are winners, Motorola and RIM not so much

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A recent survey, completed on June 24th, 2010, sheds light on the latest trends in the smartphone world, some of which are downright shocking. Conducted by ChangeWave Research, an "independent research boutique," over 4,000 consumers were surveyed throughout June, in regards to their smartphone preferences. For comparison, the results for the June survey were then compared to a March survey, asking the same questions.

A quick summary, quoted from the report itself:

• Next 90 day projections show the most extensive growth in consumer smart phone sales ever recorded in a ChangeWave survey
• Big leaps forward for Apple and HTC are occurring at the expense of Motorola and RIM
• The accompanying transformation in mobile OS preferences is being led by a huge increase in demand for the Apple OS and an accelerating downturn for the RIM OS

Let's go more in-depth with the findings. The first finding, which is rather innocuous and unsurprising: there is ever-increasing interest for consumers to purchase a smartphone. From January '08 to June '10, the percentage of people considering a purchase of a smartphone over the next 90 days increased from 8.4% to 16.4%, almost linearly, and from 10.8% in March 2010.

The next finding is the change of Market Share between the top four smartphone companies, Apple, HTC, RIM, and Motorola. As you can see from the chart below, Apple's iPhone garnered the greatest jump of 21% in consumer interest from March (31%) to June (52%). The interest in HTC devices also increased in the same timeframe, from 12% to 19%. Unsurprisingly, interest in RIM fell substantially by 8%. And finally, how did Motorola fare? According to the chart, interest in Motorola smartphones plummeted from 16% to 9%. What could've caused such a drop-off?

With Motorola having released its Droid X today, and the Droid II being slated for sometime in August, you would expect that interest in purchasing a Motorola device would've increased, rather than decreased over the past few months. Maybe we Motorola fans live sheltered lives in these here forums. Or perhaps something is not right about the sample surveyed. Either way, I would suspect these statistics to change dramatically, when the survey is conducted again in a few months.

Also, remember the data don't take into account the recent events that have occurred since June 24th. First of all, Apple's "death grip antenna" fiasco would probably cause interest in Apple smartphones to decline somewhat. Also, remember the problems with Droid Incredible shortages, which would likely cause consumer interest to decline for HTC. However, any way you slice it, this news does not bode well for Motorola. And with the recent discovery that the Droid X's bootloader being locked-down, consumer interest may again shift away from Motorola.

For another pictorial comparison, here is the comparison solely between HTC and Motorola:

And what about overall satisfaction for the top smartphone brands? Apple leads the pack by far, with HTC and Motorola limping in second and third place:

To me, the above chart to me shows a clear Apple bias to this report. It seems highly unlikely that a 100% impartial sample group would have such an inclination toward Apple, and distaste towards every other smartphone brand. Therefore, I would take all these findings with a grain of salt. What do you think? Is this a doomsday prediction for Motorola? Or a worthless Apple-biased survey?

Source: ChangeWave Research

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