It looks like BlackBerry users are increasingly dreaming of iPhones and Androids. According to Crowd Science's second semi-annual smartphone loyalty survey, nearly 40 percent of BlackBerry users prefer Apple's iPhone as their next smartphone purchase. However, a third of BlackBerry users would also switch to the Android OS.
When asked specifically if they'd swap their present phone for Google's new Android-based Nexus One, 32 percent of Blackberry users said "yes," compared with just 9 percent of iPhone users. This figure zoomed to 60 percent for users of smartphones not made by Research In Motion (RIM) or Apple.
Surprisingly, the survey of 1,140 respondents also found Android users rivaling iPhone users in loyalty, with about 90 percent of each user group planning to stick with their current brand when buying their next phone.
"These results show that the restlessness of BlackBerry users with their current brand hasn't just been driven by the allure of iPhone," said John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science, in a statement. "Rather, BlackBerry as a brand just isn't garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems."
Crowd Science says it was able to measure the effect on respondents of the debut of Google's Nexus One on Jan. 5, which occurred midway through the Dec. 24, 2009, to Jan. 21, 2010, study period. For example, awareness of the Android operating system jumped six points to 66 percent from 60 percent upon the arrival of the Nexus One.
Awareness of the Google Nexus One phone itself following launch was found to be 91 percent among iPhone users, 75 percent amongst BlackBerry users, and 73 percent among users of other smartphones.
The vast majority of survey respondents used a regular cell phone (44 percent), not a smartphone. iPhone users represented 17 percent of the respondents, followed by BlackBerry users (15 percent), Nokia (10 percent), Windows Mobile (4 percent), Android (3 percent) and Palm (2 percent).