Nearly half of all consumers say they plan to buy an iPhone in the next three months, which works swell with Apple’s plans to launch the iPhone 5 within that same prime season. It’s not a bad welcoming party for a next gen device which, aside from some broad strokes from its companion iOS 5 operating system, Apple hasn’t even shown off yet. And yet according to a recent survey, forty six percent of folks say they’ll be buying. The numbers are stunning, as that’s not out of all current iPhone users, or out of all current smartphone buyers – it’s among the general population. Suddenly the discrepancies in marketshare between Apple’s iPhone line and its other lines like the iPad and iPod, the latter two of which have overwhelming majority marketshare even as the iPhone has yet to even so much as conquer a simple majority of the smartphone market, may be ready to resolve themselves as Apple’s original vision of an iPhone in every consumer’s hands sounds like it’s about to come at least halfway true according to ChangeWave as reported by Betaews. So why the sudden change heading into the land of iPhone 5, after years of the iPhone not being able to score marketshare numbers anywhere near that? Factors from iPhone 5 carrier expansion to Verizon (and quite possibly T-Mobile and Sprint), to the various reasons the iPhone 4 era was skipped by many consumers, to the weak retention rate on the competing Android platform may all come into play.

First and foremost there’s the arrival of the iPhone 5 on Verizon. Sure, there was a Verizon iPhone 4 a few months ago. But that arrived at a time when those who knew anything about the iPhone knew that the iPhone 4 era was mostly over, and that there would be a Verizon iPhone 5 before long. So even as the Verizon iPhone 4 managed to rack up one-third of all iPhone 4 sales despite coming on board so late in the game (the other two-thirds having been scored by AT&T during its twelve-plus month iPhone 4 run), the bulk of the first-wave impact of the Verizon iPhone will be felt with the iPhone 5 launch. Some in this survey may have also been answering “yes” based on their expectation that the iPhone 5 will also expand to their preferred carrier, be it Sprint or T-Mobile, or their resolve to switch to Verizon at the launch of the iPhone 5 if their preferred carrier doesn’t begin offering it. Carrier expansion alone has the potential to double iPhone marketshare by the time the iPhone 5 era comes and goes, but there has to be more to it.

There is of course a laundry list of reasons why various consumers skipped the iPhone 4. In addition the Verizon folks skipping it when it was first offered to them in March, there were plenty of AT&T customers who opted to sit out the iPhone 4 era back when it was first offered to them last summer. First and foremost was poor availability, as the iPhone 4 was very hard to find for its first several months on the market. Then there was the lack of the white iPhone 4, which led some to wait through the entire iPhone 4 era for it to finally emerge, only to then skip it once it finally emerged ten months later with the iPhone 5 already on deck by that time. And then there were those who were scared off by the faux-antenna controversy, the faux-scratching controversy, the faux-fragile controversy, and the various other imaginary defects which some in the tech press invented in order to drive their own agenda. Those folks made up their mind a year ago that they’d be standing in line for the iPhone 5 the day it launched, no matter what the iPhone 5 looked like or consisted of, so long as it didn’t have any of the same (imaginary) problems they’d heard about the iPhone 4. So that’s another pocket of pent up demand.

But what about switchers? One the one hand there’s the damning study from earlier this year which revealed that only twenty-eight percent of Android users planned to buy another Android phone in the future. And in the other corner there are the longtime BlackBerry users who anecdotally claim to be increasingly frustrated with the stagnation of their platform, with many saying that they’re only sticking around for BlackBerry Messenger. With Apple set to build the competing iMessenger into iOS 5 on the iPhone 5, that final barrier goes away. Finally, and it’s not clear whether the news broke before the survey was completed, buy major Android manufacturer HTC is in major trouble now that Apple has successfully sued HTC and won for essentially ripping off iPhone technology for use on its Android handsets. News of foul play may not sway people on the fence into steering clear of HTC phones, but news that HTC may now be in severe trouble as a company as a result of the ruling could be a determining factor for those who would otherwise be flipping a coin between the Android phone their geek cousin is pushing on them and the iPhone they’ve wanted since 2007.

All surveys are subject to inaccuracy based on the simple fact that they survey only a tiny segment of the overall population rather than every single person out there. But if it’s even close to being true that nearly half of all consumers plan to buy an iPhone by this fall, then the iPhone 5 is arriving at a swell time for apple. Here’s more on the iPhone 5.

Source - [ beatweek ]