GigaOM » Apple

Report: two-thirds of the phones sold in Q1 were iPhones

Erica Ogg — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:33:36 +0000

A new report from analysts at Wireless Intelligence shows that Apple’s iPhone is continuing to gain market share in U.S. smartphones sales.

The report, issued Thursday, looks at sales information reported by the largest U.S. carriers and determined that during the first three months of 2012, Verizon, AT&T and Sprint collectively sold 9 million iPhones. Altogether, those same three carriers sold 13.5 million smartphones, which means that for every three smartphones they sold, two of them were iPhones.

These figures don’t match up with a recent survey done by NPD that shows Android smartphones account for about 61 percent of all smartphones in the U.S while iPhones account for 29 percent.

But they do match up with what carriers reported earlier this quarter. AT&T is riding the iPhone wave specifically when it comes to smartphones sales — 4.3 million of the 5.5 million smartphones it sold during the first quarter of the year were made by Apple. Verizon reported somewhat lower numbers: 3.2 million iPhones, but that was about half of all of its smartphone sales for the quarter. Sprint, the newest iPhone carrier in the U.S. sold 1.5 million iPhones, which was about 76 percent of all smartphones during the quarter, according to Wireless Intelligence.

For all three of these operators, their number of iPhone sales are lower in the first three months of 2012 than they were in the last three months of 2011. The fourth quarter of 2011 was notable though because it included both the launch of the iPhone 4S as well as the holiday shopping period.

So while overall numbers of iPhones weren’t as high for the first quarter as they were for the last, these numbers show that the iPhone is still the most important device that these carriers are selling when it comes to retaining and recruiting customers.

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At AT&T, iPhone continues to boom

Om Malik — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:01:35 +0000

Apple’s iPhone stayed in high demand at AT&T during the first quarter of 2012 (ended March 31,) the company reported early today. The operator sold 5.5 million smartphones of which 4.3 million were iPhone activations. Of the iPhone activations, AT&T says a whopping 21 percent were net-new additions. In comparison, Verizon activated about 3.2 million iPhones during the first quarter of 2012. The demand for the iPhones is up year over year. During the first quarter of 2011, AT&T had 3.6 million activations while Verizon had 2.2 million activations.

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Quick tip: Transfer your iPad 3G data plan to a 4G LTE plan

Geoffrey Goetz — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:00:48 +0000

One of the reasons to get the new iPad is to take full advantage of the 4G LTE wireless connectivity options offered by cell carriers. But what if you already have an iPad, and already have a data plan for that iPad? Fear not — you can transfer that data plan the day you get your new iPad with little to no hassle at all.

AT&T

First, you will need to log on to AT&T’s website and transfer your account over to your new iPad. (If you don’t know or forgot your AT&T account password for your iPad, you can have one re-issued to you.) You will also need to know your new iPad’s IMEI and ICCID settings. These are both located in the General settings on the iPad under the About section.

Log on to www.att.com/ipadlanding to access your account information.
Click on “Edit User & Payment Information,” and then select “Update Device Information.”
Enter in your new iPad’s IMEI and ICCID settings, and click on “Next.”

This process should take effect instantly and will not change or affect any other information on the plan. It has been reported that original iPad owners who have been able to retain their unlimited-data plan with AT&T will be able to keep this plan at the faster 4G LTE speeds. If you are unsure or just want to talk to an AT&T representative before doing the transfer, you can always call 1-800-331-0500 for assistance.

Verizon

It appears that, if you are transferring your Verizon data plan, you will need to contact Verizon directly by calling 1-800-786-8149 and have a service representative transfer your plan from one iPad to another. Then you will need to “Reset Subscriber Service” as well as “Reprovision Account,” which are both located in the General settings under Reset.

For both carriers, you may have to restart both your old and new iPads in order for the changes to take effect (press and hold the Sleep/Wake button on the top of the iPad for six seconds). If you search Apple’s site, you will find an outdated support article claiming that you should transfer the SIM card from your old iPad to your new iPad. This may in fact cause some issues with your carrier and force you to re-activate your iPad, or worse, cancel your account. The best bet is to stick with each carrier’s update instructions and keep the original SIM card in the iPad it came with.

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Apple’s iPad 4G LTE plan pricing detailed: Watch your speeds!

Kevin C. Tofel — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:26:50 +0000

Updated. Apple’s new iPad includes support for LTE mobile broadband, with a fallback to 3G connectivity as needed. That’s good to know, but the one important bit of information Apple neglected to share was the pricing plans for the LTE service from AT&T and Verizon. I just pre-ordered a Wi-Fi iPad, but saw the LTE pricing during the checkout process, so here it is:

Update. The rates Apple is quoting on its site for AT&T aren’t accurate, according to the carrier. AT&T will charge the same data rates it introduced in January for tablets: $15 for 250 MB, $30 for 3 GB and $50 for 5 GB.

The 5GB plans work out to an even $10 per GB, and if you opt for less data, you’ll pay more, while Verizon does provide a larger plan at $8 per GB. There’s only one problem: if you’re sucking down data at the maximum theoretical 73 Mbps speeds that the iPad can handle. At that rate — an extreme example — your 5 GB data plan would be drained in around 9 minutes! Note that the tethering option isn’t detailed yet; I expect it’s a $20 monthly fee to share your iPad’s data with other Wi-Fi devices.

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Sprint: iPhone brought 40 percent of new signups in Q4

Erica Ogg — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:15:48 +0000

Sprint sold 1.8 million iPhones in the last three months of 2011, or just a quarter of the number of iPhones that AT&T did in that same period. But it’s actually good news for the nation’s third-largest carrier, which announced its quarterly earnings Wednesday.

That’s because of the 1.8 million iPhones the carrier sold, 40 percent of them went to new customers that came to the carrier for the iPhone. We knew the iPhone was fairly popular on Sprint’s network — the carrier sold out of its stock of the iPhone 4S the first day it was available back in October.

Although 1.8 million iPhones may pale in comparison to its competitors, it was Sprint’s first quarter selling the iPhone, after all. AT&T sold 7.6 million iPhones during the quarter, but the carrier had a nearly four-year head start on Sprint. Verizon, meanwhile, sold 4.2 million iPhones last quarter.

While new customers may be coming in the door, it’s still costing Spring some extra dough. The carrier said Wednesday that the costs of subsidies it paid during the quarter went up from $1.2 billion to $1.7 billion in the last year, which was ”primarily due to the launch of the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, which on average carry a higher subsidy rate per handset as compared to other handsets.”

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This could be the iPhone’s best quarter ever

Erica Ogg — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:21:44 +0000

Remember in October how Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer went off message and actually predicted this current quarter would see Apple’s selling more iPhones than ever before? It was certainly unusual for Apple executives to raise expectations in such a specific way, but it looks like it wasn’t such a risky call: A new report from UBS says Apple is on track to sell 30 million iPhones this quarter, which would blow away the previous record of 20.34 million set in the company’s fiscal third quarter.

Maynard Um of UBS sent a note to clients late Wednesday night saying that based on AT&T’s exuberant report that the carrier is on its way to selling more iPhones than it ever has, he is upping his estimate of iPhones sold during this quarter from 28 million to 30 million. AT&T says it has sold 6 million iPhones this quarter already, so even with more than three weeks left in the quarter, its executives felt comfortable predicting it would easily surpass its current record of 6.1 million iPhones sold.

But even then, Um said his estimate is still conservative and that the actual number of iPhones sold could go even higher this quarter. He writes:

We believe that there is a general strength across the board for iPhone demand and are raising our CY4Q [estimates] to 30mn from 28mn units. We continue to believe that our [estimates] are conservative as these revised [estimates] are still below where expected build plans are. We conservatively leave our out [sic] qtr ests though we believe China launches could drive upside.

Apple, on the other hand, was the opposite of conservative when it forecast this quarter. Back in October, just after the iPhone 4S went on sale, Cook stated, “I’m confident that we will set an all-time record for iPhone this quarter,” and Oppenheimer put a bold forecast out there to match: $37 billion in revenue for this quarter — up 38 percent from the $26.74 billion of the same quarter last year — and earnings per share of $9.30, up from $6.43.

We will find out mid-January just how bold — or conservative — that call was.

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AT&T cites Apple’s iPhone as driver for record smartphone sales

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:08:15 +0000

AT&T said on Wednesday it expects to break its record for smartphones sold during a single quarter in the fourth quarter of 2011, based in part on the success of Apple’s iPhone 4S, which prompted a very high number of upgrades among its users.

For the fourth quarter of 2011, AT&T has already seen around 6 million smartphones sold: already near its previous record of 6.1 million smartphones during a single quarter. With only a month left to go in the fourth quarter (December, one of the busiest shopping months of the year for smartphones), it definitely isn’t a case of counting chickens before they hatch to say AT&T will pass the 6.1 million mark this time around.

In its official statement, AT&T singled out the iPhone 4S when talking about how it managed such strong smartphone sales, calling attention to its earlier announcement of more than 1 million iPhone 4S handsets activated in the first five days of its availability. It also said iPhone 4S sales “remain strong” for the carrier, two months after its initial release in the U.S. A lot of those sales come from a very high number of handset upgrades from AT&T customers who were eagerly awaiting new hardware according to AT&T, so pent-up demand resulting from Apple releasing this year’s iPhone upgrade later than usual could have helped boost sales even more than with previous launches.

AT&T’s account of strong iPhone 4S sales suggests analyst predictions of a very strong quarter for Apple’s smartphone are right on track.

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Apple says it dumped Carrier IQ software in iOS 5

Erica Ogg — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:43:47 +0000

Apple admitted on Thursday that it has used and supported in the past the CarrierIQ software that has the mobile tech world up in arms for its ability to track information on users’ smartphones. Apple says the software is opt-in only for its customers and it hasn’t used it for tracking keystrokes or messages. The company says it stopped supporting this software “in most” of its products with the latest version of its iOS mobile operating system. Now, after complaints regarding the level of detail the software can record about a user — and questions being asked by U.S. lawmakers — Apple says it will remove the software from all of its mobile devices through a software update.

In a statement, the company said:

We stopped supporting CarrierIQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and will remove it completely in a future software update. With any diagnostic data sent to Apple, customers must actively opt-in to share this information, and if they do, the data is sent in an anonymous and encrypted form and does not include any personal information. We never recorded keystrokes, messages or any other personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so.

Sprint has admitted to receiving data from CarrierIQ’s software, but it denies using it to track its customers, as has AT&T, which says it uses the information for network management. Verizon, on the other hand, has denied using the software, as has Google on any of the Android phones it makes.

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AT&T strongest on data and browsing in iPhone carrier study

Darrell Etherington — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:45:20 +0000

According to an extensive comparative study of iPhone 4S performance across all three major U.S. carriers, AT&T offers by far the best data performance on paper, and also performs nearly as good, or better, than both Sprint and Verizon in terms of call quality and reliability.

One of the chief complaints against AT&T for as long as it has had the iPhone has been its tendency to drop calls with alarming frequency. The new study by Metrico, a wireless performance measurement company, indicates that AT&T’s call failure rate of 2.8 percent was actually better than Sprint’s (3.7 percent), though it was worse than Verizon’s (2.1 percent). Metrico tested call performance in five major unnamed U.S. cities it says are “representative” of the overall country, and used more than 6,000 voice calls to get its results.

The iPhone 4S performed poorly in general in terms of call failure rates when compared to the competition in terms of Android and BlackBerry devices, which could be attributable to the fact that it packs both CDMA and GSM support into a device originally designed to work with just one or the other, but did much better than average in terms of data performance.

Data and web browsing was where AT&T really shined. It managed more than double the average download speeds of both Sprint and Verizon, with 3210 Kbps vs. 1071 Kbps for Verizon and 581 Kbps for Sprint. Sprint’s low score echoes user complaints that prompted the network to tell reporters it’s “taking the reports of problems [...] seriously.” It’s no surprise that AT&T dominates when it comes to data scores, since it’s the only iPhone carrier to offer HSPA+ speeds thanks to its upgraded GSM network, which the 4S supports.

Despite the difference on paper, Metrico rated all three major U.S. iPhone carriers very highly in terms of their ability to deliver full data reliably to customer devices. Still, comparative web page load times might give those still deciding between carriers something to think about: AT&T devices loaded pages in 1.29 seconds on average, compared to 2.6 seconds on Verizon and a relatively sluggish 6.44 seconds on Sprint.

Sprint took the lead when it came to voice quality when speaking, however, though AT&T wasn’t far behind. Out of a possible maximum score of five, Sprint ranked 3.95 when speaking, while AT&T was next at 3.85 and Verizon came in third at 3.5. In terms of voice quality when listening, AT&T was highest with 3.82, with Sprint second at 3.72 and Verizon last at 3.55. Metrico uses an algorithm to score call quality objectively.

Metrico stresses that the study isn’t meant to delineate a winner among the three iPhone 4S carriers, and suggests that users will have a different preference based on needs. But in a smartphone market where data and data services are increasingly replacing voice calls both in terms of usage trends among users and revenue drivers for carriers, AT&T’s data performance could actually make it the best among the three for the average smartphone user. That might not be the case for long, however, since a future iPhone could well include LTE support, which is an area where AT&T lags behind Verizon considerably.

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AT&T: We’re not seeing subscribers flee to iPhone rivals

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:39:21 +0000

AT&T isn’t seeing its network subscribers jumping the fence for greener pastures in the wake of rivals Sprint and Verizon getting the Apple iPhone, an AT&T executive said in an interview with MarketWatch on Wednesday. In fact, it hasn’t seen subscriber loss rates change at all, and it continues to experience high demand for the iPhone 4S.

Speaking to MarketWatch, AT&T President of Emerging Devices Glen Lurie said that “churn [the number of customers who cancel their services] has not moved at all.” That’s pretty much in keeping with what we saw in a third-party report from analytics firm Localytics earlier this month.

Lurie went on to praise Apple and its flagship smartphone, noting the record-breaking numbers AT&T saw in terms of iPhone 4S sales so far. AT&T is also still having trouble keeping up with demand, Lurie said, with customers currently facing a week or two delay in order to get their hands on a 4S when ordering from the carrier.

Network speed is one of AT&T’s primary advantages over the competition with the iPhone 4S, and it could be one reason users aren’t eager to switch providers. It’s the only carrier that can offer HSPA+ speeds on the device, and subscribers on Sprint have complained of slow browsing on 3G connections.

Still, AT&T’s competitors also appear to be happy with the iPhone’s sales performance on their networks. Sprint confirmed early on that the iPhone 4 and 4S beat its previous one-day sales record by a wide margin, and Verizon said during its most recent quarterly report that iPhone 4 and 4S sales remain strong. In other words, it doesn’t look like anyone has to lose in order for AT&T to win in this case.

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