Munster Estimates 80 Million iPhone 5 Sales Are Already 'In the Bag'

Piper Jaffray's analyst Gene Munster has reported the results of his annual cell phone survey, notes FORTUNE. The survey got responses from 400 people in the U.S. and Asia.

FORTUNE summarizes some of his findings...

Key Takeaways:
● Asked what phone they were going to buy next, 65% said an Apple (AAPL) iPhone, 19% said a Google (GOOG) Android, 6.5% said "not a smartphone," 6% said "I don't know," and 2.5% said a Research in Motion (RIMM) Blackberry.
● 51% of respondents who planned on making the iPhone their next smartphone (whether current iPhone users or not) said they were waiting for the iPhone 5.
● 94.2% of iPhone users plan to buy an iPhone for their next phone, improving upon last year's rate of 93%. If you throw in half of the 2.9% of iPhone owners who were still unsure, the re-buy rate rises to nearly 95.7%.
● Android phones were measured at a re-buy rate of 60%, up from 47% last year. "While the improvement is a positive sign," Munster writes, "Android is still losing 33% of current users to the iPhone. We also note that 38% of Blackberry users expect to switch to iPhone."
● Asked to put a dollar value on their current phone, iPhone owners' answers averaged $313, more than $100 higher than the device's subsidized price. Android and Blackberry phones had value averages of $220 and $219, respectively.
● Shown unlabeled scale drawings of an iPhone and a Droid Razr Maxx, 56% preferred the phone with the smaller screen, which makes one wonder why Apple would want to increase the iPhone 5's screen size, as rumored.


Considering the 94% re-buy rate and 51% of all phone owners waiting for the iPhone 5, Munster believes that more than half his projected 170 million iPhone sales for 2013 are already "in the bag."

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