“At least in the US the discard rate, i.e. number of phones being discarded over number of new phones is about 50% (56% on average over seven quarters),” Horace Deidu reports for Asymco.
“It’s a rate I find surprising because I expected more of the phones to be re-used,” Deidu reports. “But more surprising is that it leads to some surprising and possibly implausible behavior at AT&T.”
“If you look at the last three quarters, you can see that Verizon activations are very nearly equal to the increase in install base,” Deidu reports. “As all Verizon users are new, they are certainly not replacing iPhones, so the green bars next to the yellow bars imply that all those new users are Verizon users. But that means that all the activations through AT&T were to replace existing phones and that AT&T only added a bit more than one million iPhone users in nine months.”
Deidu reports, “In quarters prior to Verizon’s launch, the AT&T discard rate was a modest 60% on average and after Verizon launch it went to 81%.”
Much more in the full article, including the usual excellent charts and graphs, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]