One in Three U.S. Teens Plans to Buy an iPhone Within Six Months

Piper Jaffray's 20th bi-annual teen survey has been released, which quizzed 6,000 high school students about the iPhone, iPods and online music. The results:

• 33% of teens surveyed plan to buy an iPhone within 6 months, up from 22% last year. "Historically, interest in buying an iPhone has correlated to future market share gains among teens," said Gene Munster, senior research analyst for Piper Jaffray, "although the last two surveys have not shown the same share gains we saw when the iPhone first launched." Indeed, the 14% who say they already own an iPhone is down from 15% in 2009.

• The iPod's share of the MP3 market stands at 78%, down from 87% a year ago. Why the drop? Munster suggests it may be because 50% of students are listening to music on their smartphones.

• 76% of students download music -- unchanged from last year -- and most (66%) are still using free (P2P) file sharing networks rather than paying for their music. Among those who do pay, however, nearly all of them (95%) use iTunes.