Sam Oliver
The holiday quarter represents the debut of the iPhone on Sprint, with both the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 4 becoming available at the carrier in October. When the handsets became available, they broke Sprint's one-day sales records, but Wednesday was the first indication of just how many iPhones Sprint actually activated in the period.
In all, Sprint had net subscriber additions of 1.6 million during the fourth quarter of 2011, representing the carrier's best quarterly result in 6 years. The iPhone represented 720,000 of those new customers, or 45 percent.
"Our strong fourth quarter performance illustrates the power of matching iconic devices like the iPhone with our simple, unlimited plans and industry-leading customer experience," said Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO. "During the past year, Sprint added more than 5 million net new customers and grew wireless service revenue by more than 5 percent, including 17 percent for the Sprint platform. This momentum gives us confidence as we execute our Network Vision upgrade and 4G LTE roll-out."
Sprint's numbers compare to 7.6 million iPhone activations at AT&T, which was Apple's exclusive carrier partner in the U.S. for years. The iPhone represented more than 80 percent of the smartphones activated at AT&T in the holiday quarter.
And Verizon, the largest wireless carrier in the U.S., and a company that first gained access to the iPhone in February of 2011, activated 4.2 million iPhones in the holiday quarter. That represented more than half of the 7.7 million smartphones Verizon sold in the three-month period.
The iPhone helped Sprint report its largest sequential increase in operating revenues in more than 5 years. Sprint now serves more than 55 million customers, its highest total ever.
The carrier said its strong revenue growth and cost management were partially offset in the quarter by sales expense caused by a "successful launch of the iPhone." Last year, it was rumored that Sprint had purchased 30.5 million iPhones from Apple over the next four years in a $20 billion commitment described by The Wall Street Journal as a "bet-the-company" move.
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33 Comments
It seems impossible to deny the effect the iPhone has on the industry. Despite the high cost for carriers the device is so popular that customers are coming back to Sprint. I don't recall the last time they didn't have a net subscriber loss.
If they maintain that volume they'll just make that 28M+ commitment on iPhone purchases over 4 years. Here's hoping they do. We don't need fewer telecom options.
If they maintain that volume they'll just make that 28M+ commitment on iPhone purchases over 4 years. Here's hoping they do. We don't need fewer telecom options.
There is a clear trend of iPhone sales increasing YoY. Of course, when talking about a single carrier things could be different, especially if Sprint has to drop their unlimited data plan in the future due to excessive smartphone usage saturation but I assume that would only come about because they are doing so well in subscriber additions and upgrades from dumb phones to smartphones.
30 million - 1.8 million = 28.2 million. Oh boy.
Now, when the iPhone 5 comes out this year with LTE, who's going to get a Sprint iPhone then? Sprint does not have LTE....yes, they said they plan on it....but it won't be built out for several years.
Good for them. The iPhone needs to be on even more carriers. How many people are buying Android because they can't buy an iPhone?