A good report by Horace Dediu over at Asymco shows that about every quarter, about 56% of all new iPhones are replacing old models that have been discarded.
That’s interesting, but it doesn’t necessarily paint a good picture for AT&T, which seems to be growing new iPhone customers at a much slower rate than they once did.
If you look at the last three quarters, you can see that Verizon activations are very nearly equal to the increase in install base. As all Verizon users are new, they are certainly not replacing iPhones, so the green bars next to the yellow bars imply that all those new users are Verizon users. But that means that all the activations through AT&T were to replace existing phones and that AT&T only added a bit more than one million iPhone users in nine months.
In quarters prior to Verizon’s launch, the AT&T discard rate was a modest 60% on average and after Verizon launch it went to 81%.
In other words, since Verizon and Sprint entered the picture, far more new iPhone customers are picking those two networks than AT&T… and small wonder, given Ma Bell’s notoriously congested service.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
14 responses to “AT&T Is Winning Over Far Fewer New iPhone Customers Than Verizon And Sprint”
Competition brings balance.
Balance brings Duopoly.
Duopoly brings non competitive practices.
When you are at 100% market share…you have no place to go but down when other suppliers enter the market. This is surprising why? Did you really expect ATT to remain at 100% market share when VZ and S offer the IPhone?
Seems like the most obvious chart in history for exactly the reason Italianguy offers.
is that just taking into the iphone4s?? many of new att customers are opting to go with the free 3gs offer…
i’m just thrilled that i was able to FINALLY get rid of sorry ass att and move over to verizon – you can keep the charts!
Well duh AT&T’s iPhone customer rate is flat. They had the most saturation in terms of iPhone customers to begin with. Verizon and Sprint can only go up. Pretty obvious article.
Sorry you mention Sprint but Sprint didn’t get the iPhone until October with the 4S, wouldn’t that be Q4, but the report only shows the first 3 quarters of 2011. Basically that would make it a Verizon only case and we would have to wait for a report in the comings to actually show the addition of Sprint?
If that’s the case than the report is also kinda flawed because the third quarter doesn’t take into account the drop in sales of people waiting for the 4S therefore explaining the slow rate in AT&T, which on the flip side could have equaled larger growth Verizon if Apple released the iPhone in Q3 like they normally do. The real report is the next one, we will see if AT&T lost any significant growth after the 4S
Correct me if I am wrong tho. Just seems off.