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.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

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.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

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.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

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.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

T-Mobile: Apple’s next chipset will support AWS

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:02:07 +0000

Updated. Apple isn’t one to talk about its future plans, but that doesn’t always stop partners or potential partners from sometimes spilling the beans. Case in point: T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray told Cnet in an interview Tuesday that Apple’s “next chipset will support AWS.” That means the iPhone could soon be available on a bunch of different networks, including T-Mobile’s in the U.S., which uses the AWS spectrum.

It probably shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. After all, most expect Apple’s next iPhone to support 4G LTE technology, which runs at least in part on AWS spectrum. Verizon has especially invested heavily in AWS to enable its LTE network, planning to spend about $4 billionto buy airwaves from the cable providers. But Ray’s definite statements go a long way toward confirming Apple will at least have the building blocks of LTE support in place with its next-generation iPhone. Update: T-Mobile reached out to let us know that Ray in fact has not seen Apple’s specific roadmap, but that he believes “Apple has the option to move to AWS with the roadmap of chipsets on the market today.”

That isn’t a guarantee that T-Mobile will be an iPhone carrier with the next iPhone’s launch. Ray was careful to note in talking with Cnet that Apple could easily not take advantage of the device’s hardware compatibility and skip reaching an agreement with T-Mobile. Also, AWS antennas in an iPhone 5 might just be needed to support LTE, so there’s no guarantee that Apple will extend its use to 3G networks like the HSPA+ network that T-Mobile employs. But adding AWS compatibility has implications beyond just T-Mobile.

In the U.S., other big players that use AWS spectrum include Cricket and MetroPCS, both of which use the band for their CDMA networks. Cricket reaches around 7 million customers, while MetroPCS’s network covers 8.9 million subscribers. In Canada, the other major market where AWS spectrum is used, upstart low-cost alternatives to the big three, Wind Mobile and Mobility, have AWS networks, and major providers Bell and Rogers are using it to build out their own next-gen LTE networks.

Apple simplified its product offerings with the iPhone 4S by including world phone support, providing compatibility with a wide range of spectrums. Adding AWS support would not only put LTE support within reach, it could also potentially open up the iPhone to a whole new segment of customers, should Apple choose to explore 3G support on the AWS band as well.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

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.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

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.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

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.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

AT&T still dominates among iPhone carriers with the 4S

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:53:02 +0000

The iPhone 4S launched on three U.S. carriers simultaneously for the first time ever, but AT&T still takes home the gold in terms of the choices made by 4S customers when it comes to mobile networks, according to a new study by app analytics firm Localytics to be released Thursday.

Localytics found that of the iPhone 4S devices running apps using its popular analytics platform, 56 percent use AT&T for voice and data services, while Verizon comes in second with 32 percent, and Sprint is a distant third with just 12 percent of all iPhone 4S impressions.

Judging by the numbers, Sprint seems to have taken more customers from Verizon than from the market-leading AT&T, since the iPhone 4 split between AT&T and Verizon is 60/40. Localytics points out that the differences may be attributable to the fact that AT&T has a larger pool of existing subscribers who are eligible for contract renewal, and therefore subsidized pricing on iPhone hardware, whereas Verizon’s iPhone customers have just locked in to two-year contracts as of earlier this year, when the iPhone 4 made its debut on the network.

AT&T boasted earlier that it had signed up 1 million iPhone 4S users in just its first four days of availability, more activations than for any previous iPhone launch. During its last quarterly earnings call, Verizon said it activated 2 million iPhones during its last complete fiscal quarter, which is close to the 2.7 million activations AT&T claimed during the same period, but the Localytics data suggests the 4S could be widening the gap once again.

AT&T is also the only U.S. carrier that can offer HSPA+ speeds for the iPhone 4S, since both Verizon and Sprint’s networks use CDMA tech, which doesn’t support the boosted 3G network capabilities. Faster data speeds could be especially attractive to customers considering a device like the iPhone, which has a strong focus on data connectivity, but a lot of AT&T’s advantages at this point can probably still be attributed to its early exclusivity deals and strong existing iPhone customer base.

As we enter the holiday season, which usually see strong numbers in terms of iPhone sales, it’ll be interesting to see how the carrier distribution landscape continues to change.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Verizon iPhone sales nip at AT&T’s heels in Q3

Erica Ogg — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:09:13 +0000

Verizon sold 2 million iPhones during its fiscal third quarter, the carrier announced Friday. AT&T said Thursday it activated 2.7 million iPhones during the same time period. Though Verizon is still a newcomer to this iPhone-selling business compared to AT&T, its earnings results show it’s building iPhone momentum and gaining on its rival.

The 2 million Verizon iPhones sold actually represents a dip in iPhone activations compared to the previous quarter, but they weren’t alone: AT&T and Apple itself also saw sales of the smartphone drop off as customers were reportedly anticipating the iPhone 4S, which went on sale last week. Last quarter, AT&T sold 3.6 million iPhones compared to Verizon’s 2.3 million, both higher than this quarter’s tallies. But Verizon is closing the gap: Last quarter they trailed Verizon’s iPhone sales by 1.3 million; this quarter they trailed by a mere 700,000. And it should be pointed out that AT&T’s numbers include iPhone 3GS sales as well, which incidentally, are selling really well.

Verizon has been selling the iPhone since February, and while it appears Apple’s smartphone has been a decent tool for acquiring new customers, it has been more effective as a way to upsell its existing customers. Verizon revealed Friday that during the quarter, 20 percent of iPhone customers came to them from a different carrier, and the remaining 80 percent were already Verizon subscribers, according to a Bloomberg report.

Overall, the iPhone continues to help Verizon’s bottom line, but it’s not the sole reason the carrier doubled its overall earnings during the quarter to $1.38 million, from the $659 million it reported a year earlier, when it was iPhone-less. On Friday, it said it sold 5.6 million smartphones during the quarter, half of which were Android phones.

Although it said it “sold out” of iPhone 4S units on the first day it was available, Verizon didn’t offer any further insight into how many of the devices it has sold so far. AT&T said it has activated “more than 1 million” iPhone 4S devices already.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.