Despite the recent onslaught of high-tech smartphones to AT&T rival Verizon Wireless, users are still waiting for Apple’s iPhone.
At least that’s the general consensus from a recent ChangeWave survey (PDF download) of more than 4,000 Verizon customers, according to a new Computerworld report. How many are waiting for the iPhone? According to the poll results, more than half of them.
“[There is] an unprecedented level of pent-up demand for the iPhone among Verizon subscribers,” the Rockville, Maryland-based ChangeWave reports after their latest market research was released last week. 19 percent of those polled stated that they were “very likely” to buy an iPhone if it landed on Verizon Wireless, with another 34 percent saying they were “somewhat likely” to buy. ChangeWave notes that those numbers were higher than either Sprint or T-Mobile customers.
“If Verizon were ever to offer the iPhone, the evidence points to it having a profound and likely transformative impact on the industry,” ChangeWave concludes.
While Verizon customers have historically become used to smartphones with crippled features (such as lack of Bluetooth, where a device has it on other carriers), in recent months the carrier has stepped up their game with hot devices such as the webOS-based Palm Pre Plus and the Android-powered Motorola Droid and last week’s launch of the HTC Incredible.
BroadPoint AmTech financial analyst Brian Marshall believes it’s a win-win situation for all involved. “If Verizon gets the iPhone in the March, 2011 timeframe, as I expect, Verizon will sell at least 11 million iPhones in the calendar year.”
As far as the competition goes, the iPhone has proven to be a strong reason for AT&T customers to stay with the exclusive carrier, despite often vocal grumblings about dropped calls and slow 3G network speeds. “AT&T’s low churn rate — despite is relatively poor ‘Very Satified’ rating and its high percentage of dropped calls — is attributable to the huge advantage it continues to maintain as the exclusive U.S. service provider for the Apple iPhone,” notes ChangeWave.
BroadPoint’s Marshall concurs. “AT&T is God-awful,” he says bluntly. “But what people are saying is, ‘Don’t take away my iPhone.’”
In what could possibly be a somewhat related tip-off that AT&T
might not be handing out goodies without hidden costs, AT&T’s CEO
of Wireless, Ralph De La Vega recently suggested that the carrier might
have to implement "proper management" of their wireless users. What
precisely was meant by these comments remains to be seen, but the
suggestion that AT&T might need to control users’ bandwidth access
appears implied.
While stating the eminently reasonable position "that the few cannot
crowd out the many,” De La Vega went on to cite AT&T research that
showed 3% of the carrier’s customer use 40% of smartphone data. For
that 3%, one could reasonably believe that he was referring to iPhone
users. With a robust app store from which to choose, as well as access
to iTunes and Safari and email, the iPhone does have the greatest
number of access points to wireless bandwidth.
AT&T’s bandwidth issues are an ongoing source of problems for the
company, suggesting that management were ill-prepared to take on the
handsets when they first signed up with Apple. The lack of tethering,
the absence of MMS, these are just the small symptoms of a company that
refused to invest appropriate resources into building up a sufficiently
stable and powerful 3G network and one without a satisfactory 4G
network ready to roll out in its place.
Regarding other matters related to wireless, the CEO went on to suggest
that no new regulations were necessary, a de rigueur position among
most executives. Of course, one could easily see the carrier’s newfound
flexibility on the Skype/Vonage issue as the result of implied
regulatory pressure. At the same time, making such apps able to work on
the 3G network instead of keeping them corralled in WiFi, will only
exacerbate the lack of bandwidth issues De La Rega bemoans.
Exactly what AT&T’s double-edged strategy might be is hard to quite
grasp in this instance, unless these are unrelated, one hand unaware of
what the other is doing issues. We have our doubts though and wonder if
opening up access to the 3G network to a small group of VoIP apps might not be a sacrifice play coming up.
