The research, conducted by mobile phone comparison site Good Mobile Phones, revealed that HTC’s Wildfire, Desire and Desire HD were the three most searched-for phones on the site, with Apple’s iPhone 4 in sixth place.
More searches were also carried out over the 30-day period for Samsung’s Galaxy S handset and Nokia’s flagship N8 than for the iPhone.
The BlackBerry Curve 8520, Samsung Tocco Lite, BlackBerry Torch and Sony Xperia X10 Mini made up the rest of the top 10 most searched-for phones.
“For some time now, HTC has been knocking at the door and trying to overtake the Apple iPhone’s dominance of the handset market,” said Mark Owen, managing director of the comparison site that carried out the survey. “Our results clearly show that they have taken the lead in terms of consumer demand for their smartphones.”
He said that the cost of purchasing an iPhone 4 – which starts from £499 without a contract, and costs as much as £329 on some network and tariffs – was off-putting for consumers.
“We are surprised that Apple has done very little in comparison to its handset rivals in terms of incentivising consumers to choose their products,” he said. “And many believe that the HTC range of handsets offer a more competitive technological edge in terms of features and functionality.”
Many HTC handsets run Google’s Android operating system. The platform is now the second most popular smartphone OS in the world, with a 25.5 per cent share of the market. Apple’s IOS platform, found on the iPhone, accounts for 16.7 per cent, according to research from Gartner.
