iPhone helps AT&T add more wireless customers

by billso on Saturday, 26 January 2008

As expected, AT&T is ben­e­fit­ing from its exclu­sive rela­tion­ship with Apple. The telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pany reported on Thurs­day that it has 2 mil­lion iPhone cus­tomers. iPhone monthly sales fig­ures dou­bled in December.

As the US mar­ket becomes sat­u­rated with mobile phone users, the tel­cos rely more on get­ting cus­tomers and cor­po­rate accounts to switch providers. As I dis­cussed on 13 Jan­u­ary and 11 Jan­u­ary 2008, car­ri­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers are rush­ing new hand­sets and fea­tures to mar­ket. it’s a new level of com­pet­i­tive rivalry, and the tim­ing is good for con­sumers and cor­po­rate accounts. Stock­hold­ers may suf­fer, however.

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Tagged as: Apple, at&t, blackberry, GSM, iPhone, mobile, recession, T-Mobile, telecom, Verizon

  • kum­blas

    Sur­pris­ingly AT&T still has a lot of iPhone cus­tomers despite the fact that users have found a way to unlock the iPhone after its first few days or pub­lic release.

  • http://billso.com billso

    Apple has been very aggres­sive about relock­ing the iPhone firmware with each new release. (ApplePhoneShow.com)

    New firmware also includes new fea­tures, so Apple is cre­at­ing incen­tives for users to keep their iPhones locked. The home screens fea­ture in v1.1.3 is a good exam­ple of this.

    At any point, Apple can ‘brick’ or deac­ti­vate unlocked iPhones, or ban unlocked iPhones from spe­cific net­works, for ‘secu­rity’ rea­sons. Such is Apple’s power in the exclu­sive con­tract with AT&T and other providers.

    There is one con­firmed unlock pro­ce­dure for the new firmware, but its devel­op­ers have decided not to release their work yet. (Digg.com)

    The Sharper Image has taken a very dif­fer­ent approach by sell­ing the store’s own unlocked GSM mobile phones. But TSI has no deals with mobile car­ri­ers. It’s a more flex­i­ble dis­tri­b­u­tion model than Apple’s, but TSI cus­tomers don’t receive fea­tures like visual voice­mail. Also, TSI’s cus­tomer sup­port is not as robust as Apple’s. (GearDiary.com)

  • http://billso.com billso

    Does AT&T really have almost a mil­lion iPhones in inven­tory? Seems silly, as Apple will release a second-generation iPhone with 3G data ser­vices some­time in 2008. Apple promised those fea­tures were promised to Euro­pean tel­cos, after all. (Apple Insider, CNET)

  • http://billso.com billso

    Accord­ing to Busi­ness Week, Apple has sold 3.7 mil­lion iPhones. If AT&T’s 2 mil­lion fig­ure is accu­rate, BW esti­mates there are between 800K and 1M unlocked iPhones, prob­a­bly in use in coun­tries where Apple has no car­rier agreements.

    As long as the user doesn’t update the firmware or hard reset the phone, most of the unlock patches in use will con­tinue to work.

  • http://billso.com billso

    Engad­get reports that a soft­ware unlock for iPhone ver­sion 1.1.3 firmware is available.

  • http://billso.com billso

    Accord­ing to the Bloomberg, The Sharper Image has filed for bank­ruptcy pro­tec­tion. The chain plans to close 90 of its 184 stores.

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