Analyst: 25-percent of Apple iPhone buyers switched to AT&T

“About one quarter of consumers adopting Apple’s heavily-hyped iPhone handset are ‘switchers’ to AT&T from other carriers, financial firm American Technology Research reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources,” Katie Marsal reports for AppleInsider.

“‘We find these numbers impressive, showing that a fair amount of customers are willing to pay high early cancellation fees (~$125-$200) to get out of their existing service contracts for an iPhone,’ analyst Shaw Wu wrote,” Marsal reports.

MacDailyNews Take: What about those, like us, who have been waiting for the Apple iPhone for years and therefore just let our contracts end? We simply dumped Verizon for the iPhone with no ($0) cancellation fees.

Marsal continues, “‘…Due to AT&T’s success and ability to gain new customers with iPhone in the USA, other carriers including Orange, T-Mobile and O2 are aggressively bidding for European iPhone rights, giving Vodafone stiff competition,’ Wu wrote. ‘From our understanding, there could be a scenario where iPhone has multiple carrier partnerships (maximizing its market potential) with each tailored for specific regions and/or countries, i.e. Vodafone in the UK, T-Mobile in Germany, and Orange in France.'”

Full article here.

24 Comments

  1. Given the success of the risk that AT&T was willing to take…Apple should have no problem coming to terms with companies in other countries…and I expect Apple to have even more leverage than with AT&T when negotiating deals. You can dictate things when you have the best product.

  2. “About one quarter” huh? And from an UNnamed source? Well, here’s a NAMED source that says that 51% of iPhone buyers came from other carriers (with a chart showing the g;e from each carrier). This is from USA Today, and the firm doing the survey of 1000 iPhone owners was a company named Interpret, from CA.

    Who are we to believe?

  3. That percentage is certain to grow as the pent-up demand among AT&T users gets released and more contracts expire. Good for AT&T, so-so for Apple. I mean … Apple wins the same no matter who the customers are, AT&T wins bigger if it steals customers from other vendors.

    DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page Pod-Cast

  4. No offense to all the great folks on this forum, but if AAPL does hit $500.00, instead of chatting with you guys, I will diss ya’ll in favor of focusing my attention to the beach waitress taking my lunch order while under my spanking new umbrella sticking in the white sand.

  5. I for one would rather focus my undivided attention to spunking my stick in the waitress whilst leaving my lunch order under the umbrella with a bottle of champaign to celebrate after! ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />

  6. My partner and I switched from Verizon when we bought our iPhones last week. It wasn’t that hard of a decision to make since we were ready to get the phones when they were announced in January.

    The one sticking point was (is) that Verizon still holds a monopoly on cell phone access in Washington, DC’s subway tunnels which we both use to commute daily. Other than that, the switching experience has been great!

  7. Am I the only one who is getting tired of the disengenious use of the phrase “the heavily hyped iPhone”? Their not-so-subtle message is that the product isn’t good, that the “hype” is somehow *forcing* people to buy an otherwise low-value/over-priced product. Why can’t we *ever* get credit for buying the better product on its own merits and not excusing that for some mythical “hype”. Besides, where was Apple’s hype? Two commercials? A few print ads? Macworld back in January? The “hype”, it seems to me, has all been from the media itself, usually bloggers and anal ysts trying to slam it (or overly praise it). Apple kept it mostly a mystery…. hype usually refers to talking heads hacking some product to an insane degree until we accept “the big lie” and buy the damn thing. We’re buying the iPhone because it rocks.

  8. One Guy From Finland –

    Hey, the Dow reached it’s highest point EVER the other day! The US dollar is low for ONE reason, to BOOST exports….

    Hence why Boeing is now kicking the ARSE of that clueless organization, Airbust, as all commercial aircraft orders are priced in, you got it, US $!

    Gee, wasn’t the Euro rejected by a list of countries now that didn’t want that dreck?

    Get a clue!

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