“Apple‘s fall iPhone launch cycles generally sees a flurry of activity in the U.S. wireless industry, as carriers rely on promotions of the handset to win over high-spending wireless customers,” Trefis Team writes for Forbes.
“This year’s promos on the iPhone 7 appear to be the most aggressive we have seen over the device’s 9 year history, with nationwide carriers offering the iPhone for free with trade-in offers,” Trefis writes. “Although we believe the offers are a net negative for the industry, with costs largely rising for major players, Sprint could see the lowest financial impact while T-Mobile could see the strongest customer gains. ”
“Limited-time promotions from AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile (most of which have ended) essentially allow customers with a good credit history to trade in an old iPhone (6/6S/Plus) and get a $650 credit towards a new iPhone 7 after then sign up for a device payment plan,” Trefis writes. “With the new iPhone offers, customers are effectively enjoying lower service billings, without having to pay the device component of billings. This should put pressure on average billings per account and equipment revenues of carriers, while compressing wireless EBITDA margins. That said, there could be some benefits as well, particularly in terms of lower churn figures, as customers are locked into 24-month device payment agreements. Overall, we expect T-Mobile to win over the most postpaid customers with its offers, posting positive porting ratios versus Verizon and AT&T. The carrier noted that pre-orders for iPhone 7 were 4x that of the iPhone 6… However, Sprint – the smallest of the four carriers – stands to gain the most from these promos”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If you can upgrade to iPhone 7/Plus, even from a 6s/Plus, we highly recommend it – the significant performance improvements and upgraded cameras are more than reason enough!
I dumped ATT like a hot potato when they wanted to charge me more for everything, went to sprint, got new iPhones, more data, for $40 less a month. Haven’t looked back since. Their loss.
Yeah I dumped AT&T a year ago and went to T-Mobile. AT&T kept upping prices and I felt like I was being gouged. Sprint is something I considered but CDMA and prior unpleasant stint with Sprint years ago was a no-go. There prices are certainly attractive but I use my phone for business and can’t afford crappy network or drops. I’m assuming they’ve improved since I last used them years ago.
I do 90+% of my calls over Wi-fi and T-Mobile was dropping calls pretty regularly. Since I upgraded to new iPhone 7 plus the wi-fi stability issue seems to of resolved itself though.
Well yes, Sprint has to compete on price because that’s all they can do. But be forewarned: CDMA is a dying standard. If you travel at all, you’re going to want to have GSM phone.
T-Mobile is very hard to beat on value and customer service, and they’ve definitely improved their coverage too.
The Sprint iPhone 7/plus has both CDMA and GSM capabilities inside so when you travel abroad you just pop out the Sprint SIM and pop in whatever carrier’s SIM regardless if it is GSM or CDMA. No brainer
The Sprint network has improved greatly. For myself I use Ting Cellular which uses Sprint’s network for voice and data, but if I get in a bad area, voice will switch to Verizon’s network.
They have a great setup for people that are not power users. I am saving a ton of money for a family of four.