There has been a great deal of evidence that consumer adoption of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and Google (GOOG) Android operating-system-powered handsets including the Nexus One and Motorola (MOT) Droid has grown at the expense of Microsoft (MSFT)’s mobile system and Palm (PALM).

The shift in smart phone brand preference has begun to migrate to corporation users, a trend which will be bad news for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIMM) over time. The BlackBerry has been and still is the handheld of preference for most enterprise users and IT departments. This shows up in sharp relief in the February 2010 survey of 1,702 executives involved in the information technology spending for their companies. The RIM operating system was being used by 69% of the firms whose managers were polled in the survey last month. But, the use of the Apple OS which powers the iPhone rose from 22% in November to 27% last month. The Google Android system also gained ground up to 7% from 3%.

Looking forward to the second quarter of the year, RIM’s prospects begin to dip. Among corporate planned purchases of smart phones, Blackberries drop to 67% from 69% in November. Blackberry share peaked in the ChangeWave research in May 2008 at 82%, so its position as the premier business smart phone has dropped substantially in less than two years. The iPhone has almost tripled its share of planned purchases for corporate use from 13% in May 2008 to 34% in the most recent research.

Smart phone purchase trends at corporations are an ongoing bright spot for manufacturers. The current survey of planned purchases shows a very slight dip in corporate smart phone buying plans for the 2nd quarter. A total of 36% of respondents say their company plans to buy smart phones next quarter, 2% less than previously but the second highest level ever recorded in a ChangeWave survey.

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