More smartphone buyers prefer Apple's iOS

A latest survey released on Monday showed that iPhone is the top choice for nearly half of North American consumers who plan to purchase a smartphone in the next three months. According to the survey conducted by ChangeWave Research in June, 46 percent of respondents prefer a device running Apple's iOS, the mobile operating system powering the iPhone. The number increased by two percentage points compared to a similar poll conducted in March. The survey mainly focused on the North American smartphone market. Among the 4,163 respondents, 89 percent were from the United States and 11 percent outside the country. Around 32 percent of prospective smartphone buyers said they will choose a device powered by Google's Android operating system, which is up one percentage point compared to the poll in March. The gains of Apple and Google's market shares came at the expense of Blackberry phones developed by Research in Motion. Only 4 percent of planned smartphone consumers want to buy a Blackberry, which is down one percentage point since March and the lowest share ever seen in a ChangeWave poll. In September 2008, some 32 percent of consumers said they prefer Blackberry. The survey also took a look at the potential impact of Apple's iCloud service which will become available this fall. Some 29 percent of Apple product owners said the upcoming iCloud service makes them "more likely" to buy Apple products in the future. ChangeWave said the result shows the new iCloud service is enhancing existing customer loyalty and will generate customer demand for other Apple products. Apple's iCloud, introduced in early June, will automatically store music, photos, apps and documents, and wirelessly push them to any Apple device to enable access for uses anytime and anywhere. For customer satisfaction, iPhone had the highest satisfaction rate in the industry with 70 percent of users "very satisfied" with the iOS. Some 50 percent of Google Android users said they were "very satisfied" with the operating system. Only 26 percent of Blackberry users said they were satisfied with the system. Meanwhile, the poll found that 57 percent of consumers using Windows Phone 7 said they were "very satisfied." However, "the higher Windows Phone 7 rating has yet to produce a sustained momentum boost for Microsoft in terms of buyer preference," according to the survey.