Handset hankering
Prospective smartphone owners are more likely to search for a choice of handsets by HTC than look up an iPhone, new research says.
According to a poll by comparison site Good Mobile Phones, HTC has the top 3 most searched-for handsets around in the form of the Wildfire, Desire and Desire HD, The Daily Telegraph reports.
Reportedly lagging somewhat behind the HTC trio is Apple's iPhone 4 in 6th place, also trumped by Samsung's Galaxy S handset and Nokia's new N8 Symbian offering.
RIM's BlackBerry Curve 8520, Samsung's Tocco Lite, the BlackBerry Torch and Sony's Xperia X10 Mini reportedly complete the rest of the top 10 spots.
It looks like there is a good cross range of smart or feature phone offerings at various price points in the top 10 but despite a tough economic climate the top 5 is mostly made up of relatively high priced handsets packed with the latest smartphone features.
Mark Owen, MD of the comparison site told the newspaper: "For some time now, HTC has been knocking at the door and trying to overtake the Apple iPhone's dominance of the handset market. Our results clearly show that they have taken the lead in terms of consumer demand for their smartphones."
He is said to believe that the hefty price tag of Apple's handset which starts at £499 PAYG and can still cost £329 with a contract is probably the biggest barrier to consumers in choosing an Apple handset.
"We are surprised that Apple has done very little in comparison to its handset rivals in terms of incentivising consumers to choose their products and many believe that the HTC range of handsets offer a more competitive technological edge in terms of features and functionality," he reportedly added.
Meanwhile, while HTC seems to be doing very well overall, it is being pipped to the post in becoming the most popular handset manufacturer for the new Windows Phone 7 platform, according to an unofficial poll on unofficial Windows phone blog WMPoweruser.com.
The poll, which collected 1,500 votes from Windows Phone 7 owners, found that Samsung has 51 percent of the market while HTC has grabbed 37 percent. Both handset makers are clearly ahead of the competition though with LG gathering 9 percent of the WP7 market and Dell a measly 3 percent. It is early days in the WP7 market share race and perhaps Dell's Venue Pro and LG's Quantum have yet to catch on as they have both apparently been only recently made available in limited numbers.
