HTC?
HTC are the top smartphone manufacturer in the US (Q3 2011). So either HTC will rapidly plummet, or this speculation survey should be taken with a pinch of salt. My guess is the latter. Nokia and Samsung consistently outperform Apple in the market, but we only hear about the surveys in the press that make Apple look better.
"for 'most' normal people (i.e. not techies who want to re-rom their toaster) the iPhone is the phone they want "
No, for most people, Android is number one, Symbian is number two - IPhone number three. That's a fact. It's only (some) techies who seem to think that Apple are the thing everyone should have.
Also remember that IPhones are the most expensive on the market - so firstly, comparing them to platforms which include much cheaper phones is misleading. *Of course* people will, on average, "want" the more expensive phone. Whether they actually get it is another matter, and that's what counts.
Similarly, people who have spent on average £500 on a phone are obviously going to be more satisfied than platforms where the average might be £200 or less. How do the platforms fare if we restrict it to comparisons at a given place? (Also you have the RDF effect where people will be happy with Apple no matter what, because they think it's amazing you can do basic things like make a phone call and email, and don't care if it can't do 3G or copy/paste; where as users of other platforms know that phones are capable of more than this, so are disappointed if it doesn't yet have a quad core 4GHz processor.)
"and most of the Android users are looking to switch to iOS."
So if this is really true, we should see Android plummet from it's >50% share, and IPhone rocket from 3rd place to 1st place, within the next few months. Will it happen?
"Samsung did a good job of copying the iPhone"
Samsung were in the business before Apple I believe, Apple did a good (or bad) job of copying Nokia, you might as well say.
From the article: "Nokia, incidentally, scored 23 per cent, putting it on a par with RIM. These two really have some work to do on their handsets."
No, they don't - I love my 5800 just fine. We're just not raving fanatics who think our company invented or "popularised" the smartphone. (Oh wait - Nokia did!) We've heard these doom and gloom surveys for years, yet Nokia are still number one in the mobile market.