Apple iPhone soon to overtake RIM BlackBerry in consumer smartphone market

“A new report by ChangeWave Research provides yet more evidence of the surge in consumer interest in smartphones; and of Apple’s iPhone in particular. Last week we reported statistics from AdMob stating that smartphones are now edging out feature phones as the device of choice for consumers. In the race for the highly lucrative consumer smartphone market, blackberry devices still hold the lead over iPhone – but ChangeWave’s data shows that the gap is rapidly closing,” Richard MacManus reports for ReadWriteWeb.

“We predict that it won’t be long until Apple overtakes RIM as the leader in this hotly contested (and vitally important, in context of the Web’s shift from PC to phones) market,” MacManus reports.

“RIM’s market share is creeping down, while Apple’s surges up. ChangeWave puts RIM at 40% of market share, but Apple is now just 10% points behind at 30%. This was mainly due to the the iPhone 3GS release, which saw Apple gain [5 percentage points] since June,” MacManus reports. “Perhaps the most telling statistic in the ChangeWave report, also happens to be the most qualitative. 74% of the iPhone owners that ChangeWave polled reported that they’re “Very Satisfied” with their iPhone. Less than half of RIM device owners said that.”

Full article here.