As experts attempted to gauge the potential impact of AT&T losing its exclusive iPhone arrangement to Verizon, the opinions ranged from a severe body blow to downright demolishing. However, just weeks from the Feb. 10 (Feb. 3 for pre-orders) date for Verizon sales to begin, one expert claims 90 percent of AT&T iPhone owners are locked-in to contracts with costly early-termination fees.
Indeed, Susquehanna analyst Jeffrey Fidacaro believes AT&T will lose 2 million subscribers – “at most” to rival Verizon. What’s holding them there? Apparently, there are several hundred reasons. The No. 2 carrier will charge a $325 early-termination fee. The 90 percent expected to remain with AT&T is even higher than the figure CEO Ralph de la Vega gave reporters last year. The carrier executive said in May that he wasn’t too worried about the (then potential) Verizon deal, given that 70 percent of iPhone owners used family plans with onerous restrictions and the 40 percent of iPhone users attached to corporate discount plans.
Perhaps even more interesting is the experience of other nations’ carriers who lost iPhone exclusivity. In the UK, for example, carrier O2 reported no evidence that any of its iPhone subscribers jumped ship when Apple inked deals with competitors. The Cupertino, Calif. company reportedly has even worked with AT&T to soften the blow of the loss of iPhone exclusivity in the United States.
The real worry for AT&T may come when the most valuable exclusivity – individual subscriber contracts – expire and carrier customers can decide whether to jump to Verizon Wireless without being socked in the wallet.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
