iPhone as popular as Nokia in US, survey shows

Despite being four months away from release, Apple's iPhone is already among the four biggest brands in the high-end cell phone market, according to a new US consumer survey sponsored by Goldman Sachs.

Potential mobile phone buyers ranked Apple almost equal with Nokia, even though they gave their opinions before Apple had even formally announced the iPhone. Nokia is the world's largest mobile phone maker.

So powerful is the Apple brand that to date, the company has only screened a single iPhone advert, which gave almost no information and did not even name the product.

That ad, however, did run during the widely-viewed Oscar awards ceremony, and was preceded by a firestorm of media attention – after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs announced his company's long-expected entry into the mobile phone market.

The iPhone's three Oscar-night ad spots cost about $1.7 million each, according to press reports. Lacking the hype that surrounds Apple, rival Nokia has to work considerably harder to maintain a similar hold on consumer attention. The company spends $6m every day on sales and marketing of its mobile phones (It's unclear how much of that is spent in the US, which provides 8 per cent of Nokia's sales).

Apple is on target to claim a significant chunk of the high-end handset market, which provides 40 per cent of all mobile phone profits worldwide, according to analysts from Goldman Sachs and branding research consultancy,Wolff Olins.

“The strength of Apple’s brand in particular makes it a dangerous rival,” the analysts write in a new report based on the results of a consumer survey.

Consumer survey

Researchers asked US consumers: “If you were to choose a multimedia phone from the following manufacturers, each with exactly the same features, which brand would you choose?”

Thirty percent picked Motorola, the US's leading cell phone brand, 15 percent favored Nokia, while Apple and LG were the favorites of approximately 13 percent. The survey also found that almost half of US cell phone owners plan to buy a new phone within a year.

The iPhone brand appears to be strongest in the US. When asked the same question, more than 40 percent of UK consumers went for Nokia, while only five percent chose Apple's product.

“We believe Apple’s biggest challenge will be its aggressive effort to break the stronghold of the US operators on distribution and ownership of consumer services,” say the survey's authors.

“In direct contrast to Blackberry and other vendors, Apple’s deal with Cingular allows it to distribute the product in its own stores, and will predominantly drive traffic towards Apple rather than Cingular’s online content and services, in our view.”

If Apple succeeds in breaking US mobile carriers' grip over mobile phone sales, it is likely to reap very high profit margins, they believe.

Perhaps indicating the importance of this battle, the company's Oscar-night ads are a first for Apple – the company has never before advertised a product which was not ready to hit retail shelves.

Update June 18: 19 million in the US are highly interested in buying an iPhone, according to research firm M:Metrics. This is almost double the projected number of shipments during the next 18 months. Apple has announced a release date of June 29 for the phone.