The article doesn't say, and I didn't see a link to the report which might have provided useful information...
However, I can see two basic forms this survey question might have taken.
First: "which smartphone would you consider buying: iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, ..." (Or asking type-by-type "would you consider buying an X?"
Second: "which sort of smartphone would you consider buying?"
You can get wildly different answers by changing the form of the question. Providing a list and saying "which would you consider?" is probably going to get a lot of people saying "sure, I'd consider that", whereas asking without the prompt is going to produce a list of the devices with actual mindshare.
"Android and iOS are covered tons in the media, and Windows Phone—surprisingly for a Microsoft product—seems to have missed the boat on brand awareness. An embarrassing 45 percent of consumers surveyed by NPD said they were unaware of Windows Phone 7.
And among the 50 percent of consumers who said they will be buying a smartphone, but didn’t want to buy a Windows Phone, the biggest reason, accounting for 46 percent of respondents, was because they didn’t know enough about the Windows Phone OS."
Basically if you know about WP then you'd consider it. But nearly as many people don't know about it at all as those that have heard of it.
However, I can see two basic forms this survey question might have taken.
First: "which smartphone would you consider buying: iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, ..." (Or asking type-by-type "would you consider buying an X?"
Second: "which sort of smartphone would you consider buying?"
You can get wildly different answers by changing the form of the question. Providing a list and saying "which would you consider?" is probably going to get a lot of people saying "sure, I'd consider that", whereas asking without the prompt is going to produce a list of the devices with actual mindshare.