FLASH: Consumers Still Want iPhones!

Consumer interest in the iPhone 4S is greater now than it was last December, smack dab in the middle of the holiday shopping season. That’s the word from ChangeWave (via Apple 2.0, which surveyed 4,413 consumers about their smartphone purchasing plans).

Among respondents who plan to buy a smartphone in the next three months, 56 percent said they’ll purchase an iPhone. That’s two percentage points more than ChangeWave’s last survey, taken in December of 2011.

It’s also a better performance than all Apple’s rivals, save one. According to ChangeWave, interest in Samsung handsets held steady at 13 percent between both surveys. HTC’s also stayed flat at 3 percent. Meanwhile, Motorola fell by one point to 6 percent. And Research In Motion? The interest in the beleagured BlackBerry maker’s smartphones actually rose — from 2 percent to 3 percent.