International new service Reuters has been polling buyers during the first 72 hours since the iPhone 4S went on sale and found that 22% of them were converting from other platforms, especially BlackBerry and Nokia, but also Android.

On Sunday, Reuters reported:

“The majority of the 127 iPhone 4S buyers polled informally by Reuters in the United States, Japan, Australia, France, Germany and Britain were Apple diehards upgrading their devices. But 28 claimed they were making a switch, with some saying they were disillusioned by Research in Motion after this week’s global BlackBerry outage that enraged millions.”

The report quoted former Nokia and BlackBerry owners who were making the switch, which isn’t much of a surprise since both of those platforms have been losing momentum in recent years as Android and iPhone have grabbed most of the momentum in the smartphone market. However, Reuters also noted that the upgraders included several Android owners, but didn’t provide a breakdown of how many buyers were coming from Android versus BlackBerry, Nokia, or other platforms.

Of course, most readers will see this and question that it’s only an informal poll of 127 people. But, in the past when I’ve asked statisticians about small polls like this, they typically say that a sample of 100 or more is statistically significant as long as it’s a legitimate, unbiased cross-section. Since Reuters did its survey across six different countries, that gives some credibility. More data gathering will need to be done, but this is an interesting first peek at whether Apple is going to be able to cast a wider net in the smartphone market.

This is a topic that we’ve discussed over on ZDNet in the Great Debate the past two weeks, in both the discussion of the iPhone 4S and the debate over Android’s future.

If you have purchased an iPhone 4S or plan to in the near future and you’re are converting from another platform, please post in the discussion below and tell us which platform you’re coming from and why you’re making the switch.