Some people have just got to have them.  Most people agree that the ThunderBolt isn’t the best Android device on the market today, but its ability to get speeds of over 20Mb/second, faster than many wired ISPs, have people snapping them up.

Barron’s quotes BTIG Research analyst Walter Piecyk who ran checks on 150 different Verizon Wireless stores in 22 cities this week:

…in 61% of cases, store reps told Piecyk that sales were about the same; in 11% of cases, the iPhone sales were ahead; in 28% of cases, the Thunderbolt was ahead.

“Clearly the strong sales of the ThunderBolt could be a result of the hype following the recent launch of the ThunderBolt,” two weeks ago, he writes. “But the qualitative feedback we received from sales people was an expectation that the ThunderBolt would keep pace with the iPhone.”

If you add Verizon’s many other Android offerings to the mix and consider that Apple (AAPL) isn’t likely to introduce an iPhone 5 until the fall, it seems unlikely that a Verizon iPhone will stop Android’s momentum.

So much for the Verizon iPhone effect.

More on Fortune:

• Apple’s revamped hardware schedule
• 4G won’t solve 3G’s problems
• My phone is faster than my cable modem