ChangeWave has a new survey out indicating that 54 percent of near-term smartphone buyers are planning on picking up the iPhone 4S over competing devices.

The late December survey looked at smart phone demand trends going forward, and finds Apple iPhone demand remains incredibly strong more than two months after the iPhone 4S release. Among respondents planning to buy a new smart phone in the next 90 days, better than one-in-two (54%; down 11-pts) say they'll get an iPhone. Apple has never dominated smart phone planned buying to this extent more than two months after a major new release.

The survey, conducted in late December, studied 4,000 North American consumers with the results suggesting huge demand for the iPhone 4S even with it being more than two months old. Based on ChangeWave's history, this also advocates the iPhone 4S as being Apple's most popular release, as they've never covered the spread of planned smartphone purchasers this far after a major iPhone release.

In addition, Apple continues to lead smartphone satisfaction rates with 76 percent being very satisfied with their iPhone, compared to the nearest competition coming in at around 47 percent with Samsung.

Source: ChangeWave

Both iTunes Store music and iOS App Store apps are being downloaded at an increasing rate. Apps are just increasing faster.

As can be seen, the App store has reached the same total downloads in 2.2 years as the iTMS reached after five years. The two curves are likely to be the same height (around 13 billion each) before the year is over.

I'm downloading far more apps than music, what about you?

[Asymco]

The above graph, part of Morgan Stanley Internet analyst Mary Meeker's presentation at Web 2.0, showing iPhone/iPod touch as the fastest-growing consuming electronic platform in history pretty much speaks for itself. However, TechCrunch is happy to add a big exclamation point at the end:

[iPhone/iPod touch] adoption ramp is even steeper than videogame consoles including the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, and Sony PSP. The original iPod and Blackberry aren’t even in the same league.

No doubt this plays into Apple's recent financial results, but building on what must now be around a 60 million strong install base (50 million from last quarter + 7.4 million new iPhones, + undisclosed amount of iPod touches), builds just the kind of momentum that tends towards freight-train like.

TechCrunch also shows charts highlighting the increase in AT&T data traffic since the iPhone came online (4,932%), and how mobile adoption is "outpacing" desktop. Check out the full article, linked above, for more.