It looks like a lack of Christmas isn’t slowing down anybody’s desire to buy smartphones. ChangeWave Research, an independent research firm that examines consumer behavior, has found that people are still clamoring to get their hands on iPhones and Samsung smartphones.

Unsurprisingly, demand for Apple’s iPhones continues to dominate the market months after the release of the iPhone 4S. ChangeWave, who tracks consumer behavior in quarterly reports throughout the year, states that “Apple has never dominated smart phone planned buying to this extent more than two months after a major new release.” Again, it’s not exactly news to blow your hair back but it’s suggestive of the Siri factor that the iPhone 4S offers users.

The amount of people who plan to buy an iPhone has steadily increased over the past four years with the predictable spikes of interest whenever a new iPhone was released. Traditionally, the amount of people intending to purchase an iPhone drops precipitously a few months after the release of a new model but then establishes a new baseline that is higher than the previous baseline percentage of people planning to buy an iPhone before a new model is released. Apple, in other words, are wizards at creating a sustained interest after the release of iPhones.

What’s more telling is that, while iPhone’s demand has remained strong, it’s dipped 11% from September to December among people planning to purchase a smartphone within the next 90 days. Alternately, the amount of people planning to purchase a Samsung smartphone climbed 8% in the same time period. Combine that with the 2% increase of consumers planning to purchase a Motorola smartphone and you can pretty much see where that missing 11% of would-be iPhone buyers went. In case you forgot, Samsung launched a pretty wild campaign for their Samsung Galaxy S II phone by singling out iPhone users as an affected group of Kool-aid-swilling consumers. While this wouldn’t normally resonate among consumer trends, the December 2011 marks the single-highest increase of people planning on buying a Samsung smartphone in the past four years. That said, it seems Samsung’s left a favorable impression on the minds of potential buyers.

Maybe Samsung’s new market of planned buyers were poached from Apple or maybe they’ve managed to appeal to a sect of consumers who, until now, had remained smartphone-less. When ChangeWave releases their data for March later this year a clearer picture of how (or if) Samsung has chipped into Apple’s market dominance will take a firmer shape.