• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, January 9, 2012

Demand for the iPhone remains strong at the start of 2102, according to a new ChangeWave study. Asked in December which smartphone manufacturer or type of smartphone they planned to buy in the next 90 days, more than half (54%) of the 4,000 North American consumers surveyed named the Apple handset.

That figure is down fro 63% in September, a month prior to release of the iPhone 4S, but still well ahead of the field. Samsung, which offers a lineup of Android-based phones, was a distant second behind Apple, at 13%, followed by Motorola (7%), HTC (3%) and BlackBerry (2%).

Still, demand for Samsung phones is up eight percentage points from September, driven mainly by the just released Galaxy Nexus, the first U.S. 4G phone running the new Android 4.0 operating system known as Ice Cream Sandwich. BlackBerry, however, has fallen to it’s lowest level ever in a ChangeWave survey, another ominous sign for Research in Motion as it struggles to get back into the smartphone race.