ChangeWave Phones June 09

Demand for smartphones has reached an all-time high thanks to iPhones and the Palm Pre but is hurting the BlackBerry as a result, according to new data from ChangeWave. A mid-June study from the research group has 14.4 percent of those tracked looking to buy some kind of smartphone within the next 90 days, a record high and a large jump from 11.2 percent in March. Of these, a full 44 percent now plan to buy an iPhone compared to 30 percent just three months earlier.

Palm has also seen its demand spike in the same timeframe. Interest in buying a Pre has exactly doubled from 4 percent of smartphone buyers to 8 percent even in the week after the launch, which would have satisfied some of that demand.

The surges for Apple and Palm appear to come directly at the expense of BlackBerry purchasing plans. Where hopes to buy BlackBerries were near an all-time high at 37 percent in March, they have since plummeted to 23 percent in June. Not all reasons are provided, but an increasing preference for touchscreens is considered a partial factor: the importance of these for users grew from 33 percent in September to 43 percent this month. Simultaneously, an insistence on a hardware QWERTY keyboard has remained flat at 33 percent.

A shift of the sort if it translates to actual purchases would signify a sharp reversal for RIM, which most expect will have a record or near-record number of phone shipments when it reports its quarterly results later today. The company has secured a number of important carrier additions in the spring that include AT&T's version of the BlackBerry Curve 8900. Its summer should also fare well with the launch of the BlackBerry Tour for most if not all major CDMA carriers in North America. [via Fortune]

By Electronista Staff

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iPhone, industry, BlackBerry, Palm, Research in Motion, mobile phones, Apple