Survey Says iPhone 5 Demand is Sizzling

We noted an interesting story carried in CNNMoney, which cited a survey from Piper Jaffray on the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone. ^[1] In short, this survey concludes that the pent-up demand for the iPhone 5 is huge, which is great for Apple and could spell disaster for Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) and Nokia (NYSE:NOK) that are being dominated in the smartphone segment as their market share slides.

According to the survey of 216 mobile phone users, 29% of respondents currently own an iPhone while 64% of respondents plan to buy the iPhone as their next phone. The majority of the respondents (55%) planning to buy an iPhone are waiting for the iPhone 5 arrival. Interestingly only 6% of current iPhone users plan to switch to Droid while 42% of Android users plan to switch to iPhone.

Now this survey admits that the data comes from a small sample set in Minneapolis in “food courts, on the street, near the entrance of a baseball stadium on a game day” and so can hardly be taken as an indication of broader demand. Nonetheless, we thought it was both entertaining and a small indication of the impact that the iPhone 5 could have for Apple.

The iPhone constitutes more than 50% of our $510 price estimate for Apple’s stock. We expect the iPhone 5 to launch sometime around Sept.-Oct. this year.

See our complete analysis for Apple stock here

1. CNN Money quoting Piper Jaffray as the source, August 1st, 2011 [↩]