The NPD Group, a market-research firm, reports that 30 percent of the U.S. consumers who purchased Apple’s iPhone 3G from its release on July 11 through August switched mobile carriers in order to join AT&T, which holds exclusive U.S. sales rights for the red-hot device.
About half of AT&T’s new iPhone 3G customers elected to switch from Verizon Wireless, while 24 percent came from T-Mobile defections, and 19 percent abandoned Sprint, noted Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for NPD.
“The launch of the lower-priced iPhone 3G was a boon to overall consumer smartphone sales,” Rubin said. “While the original iPhone also helped win customers for AT&T, the faster network speeds of the iPhone 3G have proven more appealing to customers that already had access to a 3G network.”
On a Roll
Even before the release of the iPhone 3G, AT&T’s wireless business unit had been on a roll. The company said in July that its wireless revenues in the second quarter amounted to $12 billion — a 15.8 percent increase over the prior-year period. The wireless carrier’s service revenues, which exclude handset and accessory sales, grew 14.8 percent to $11 billion.
AT&T’s iPhone exclusive should give the carrier a competitive edge over its rivals. “The current economic environment continues to negatively impact the market, limiting consumer spending and replacement purchases in general,” said Roberta Cozza, a principal analyst at Gartner.
Despite the economic downturn, smartphones in general — and the iPhone 3G in particular — are expected to continue to attract a lot of consumer attention.
“As they become inexpensive gateways to the Internet from practically anywhere, smartphones are delivering a better consumer value than ever before,” Rubin said. “However, more must be done to show the advantages of their operating systems to keep them ahead of increasingly sophisticated feature phones.”
Declining…