First month French iPhone sales fall shy of target - Page 3

Ok, so can send 400 text messages or have 200 calls or some combination of 0.085*x texts + 0.17*y calls = 34. (Though your link state 20, 10, 12, and 20 pence for voice, text, voicemail, and picture messaging.) All this including the unlimited data for approximately 23 pounds or 46 dollars. That's a good deal. Wouldn't mind seeing that in the USA at all.

The "proponents of the pessimistic viewpoint" are fully invested in the iPhone not doing well. The idea is to shame Apple into offering features on the phone that they feel Apple should have offered in the first place. The market is to punish Apple which will subsequently scramble to add subsequent features. They seem to fully believe this viewpoint no matter the information to the contrary. So they don't speak in maybe and possibly only definitely.


I never really believed that 5 year deal rumor. Five years is a long time in technology years. The way the mobile phone market runs is completely counter to Apple's business culture and I doubt Apple really approves of their business practice. The way the mobile phone market works is more akin to Microsoft's business model. I think Apple is using these partners as a starting foundation for the iPhone and has a broader vision beyond them.


I think its a good deal for certain situations. My mobile is my primary phone. I would go over this limit quickly in the long run cost me more than a contract plan.

Sigh. Big boys don't cry, Teno.

First, it's laughable that guys like Mel or myself want the iPhone to do poorly, considering that we're stockholders.

Secondly, I know you're constantly upset by the fact that very few ppl buy into your "Everything's GREAT in Europe" spin, but reality is reality, and its been contradicting you, so you really can't expect much popular support. But I guess you can whine about the lack of same.

Apple goofed on the Euro iPhone's feature set, and in conjunction with the poor pricing, the result has been a lackluster European launnch. What more needs be said? \

If you do not like said reality, I am sorry, but there is little I can do to change it. But Apple can, by addressing the issues in question (price, feature set).

Ironically, a little 'tough love' here actually makes Apple stronger... the sooner they react, the more competitive they'll be. Its actually the notion that everything's 'hunky dory' as is that's a threat to Apple's well-being.

So Teno, do you work for Microsoft or Nokia? Just kidding.

.

If you've been listening to our Euro friends, there doesn't seem to be any 'perhaps' about it.



Why? Because they made an iPOD Nano? Please. Two different markets, two different devices. Is an iMac Nano a sure thing then? Nothing is guaranteed.

Apple just doesn't appear to be into making many different models of the iPhone... for example, we won't be getting a 3G iPhone until the Asian launch, i.e. when it becomes absolutely necessary.



I'd say more like slightly under 2m in Q4, with the lion's share of sales coming from the US, of course.



It's not really a luxury item. It may seem like that compared to cheap flip phones, but when you compare it to its true competition, smartphones from the likes of RIM, Nokia, Palm, etc., it's retail price is actually quite mainstream.

The problem is that Apple and ATT don't subsidize the price to the customer, while other phone makers do. Even then though, the iPhone isn't priced particularly out of line with many other smartphones, at least in the US.



A storage increase would be nice, but is a minor hardware revision, really, and wouldn't address the larger hardware-related issues (3G, true GPS).



Pretty much what I already said... 3G iPhone in mid-to-late '08, for the Asian launch.



That really doesn't make any sense.



Satisfaction rates overall are mediocre, but that does not mean that all carriers are the same. For example, we see people leaving Sprint at double the percentage rate that they are leaving Verizon, nationally. If Sprint and Verizon were equally mediocre, on average, you'd expect those rates to be much closer.

The only counter-argument I've ever heard to the above fact is that Verizon's marketing is somehow far superior to Sprint's, and it may be, but I find it humorous that anyone would think that ads alone could convince most ppl to stay with a service that does not work for them.



The problem with anecdotal evidence is that it only describes the experience of that one person, not the market as a whole.




It is a 'happy choice' in the short term, while Apple's trying to get the iPhone off the ground. But in the medium- or long-term, going single carrier holds iPhone sales back.



Honestly, in the US its not that expensive at all for a smartphone. The UK is different though, with fiercer competition.



LOL. 'Happy Choice' sounds like a chain of Chinese food restaurants.

Anyways, in the short-term its a good trade-off, in the longer term, its definitely not.



I really, really doubt it.

.

The precise quote from the Orange CEO appears to be as follows:

Didier Lombard, chief executive of Orange, made the comments Tuesday during an interview with Europe 1 radio. He said his firm's sales target "is a little under 100,000" units sold between Wednesday evening -- when the Apple handset will make its debut in France -- and December 31st.

How that got spun into "50 to 100,000" is beyond me, but I guess if I missed my sales goal, I'd try to spin too.

In any case, you seemed to think it important to point out that you had an article from Nov 28th pointing out the spin goal. I merely pointed out that even earlier articles quoted the 100,000 figure, not the spin number.



There's a lot of different ways to interpret it, actually.




NYC is far from the entire country. Though NYC residents sometimes forget that.



If that were true, then churn/customer loyalty rates between carriers would be largely the same. But they're not, they vary widely actually.



The combined population of the areas you mention is less than 10% of the country. In addition, ATT isn't even that good in some of those areas. Its obvious that the single carrier strategy is more about getting the iPhone established, rather than allowing consumers to select the best carrier in their area. Which holds iPhone sales back. Once the iPhone is established, carrier exclusivity becomes a ball-and-chain.

Thus, I'm quite confident that Apple's exclusivity deal with ATT won't run the full optional five years. That'd be silly, especially considering that competitors would be free to sell their 'iPhone clones' to the entire US market, while Apple would be stuck selling to the 27% or so of the market that ATT controls.

.

Just like the USA is not the entire world. Though USA residents sometimes forget that.

I actually agree with that... Americans are indeed very "USA-centric". Though in our defense, its a very big country, with a lot going on. If we had a Euro-type setup, i.e. many smaller nations packed side-by-side, I'm sure we'd be different.

I wouldn't complain too much. After all, without us, you'd never get any new episodes of Jerry Springer, which you Brits seem so addicted to.

.

Europeans aren't Euro-centric?

That's news.

Yes, but the Euros will say that's okay, since their backyard encompasses a great many languages, cultures, etc.

Though, come to think of it, so does America's. Its just all under one roof.


.

I'm not sure it's been on TV here for years actually though we did turn it into a satirical musical which managed to upset fundie Christians. That was a delicious idea. Well done Stewart Lee.



By comparison, not really, and I say that as someone who almost went insane living in Pensylvania for months having to put up with US TV News and newspapers that seemed to be missing the international news section.

Not upset at all I just don't agree. I don't see the majority of people agreeing with you. Most seem to take a wait and see approach. From the evidence I see the iPhone is about right in line with most other mobile phone sales at a higher price. Not exceptionally better but not poor either.


This is based on your narrow definition of poor sales. Looking at it from newly signed subscribers and increased profit point of view (which is the primary reason for all of this) iPhone sales are fine.


No one is saying everything is hunky dory. Just because Apple has built incredible attention around the iPhone does not mean they can rest they must continue to innovate. During the US launch Jobs said they were already working on the next iPhone.

But if you really feel "tough love" from some unknown people in an anonymous internet forum will sway a billion dollar company with thousands of smart employees. I won't try to break that delusion.


The 50 to 100 spin is what Lombard told CNN/Money during the France launch.

Orange CEO Didier Lombard was bullish on the prospects of the iPhone, saying earlier in the week that they were targeting sales of between 50,000 and 100,000 by the end of the year.

Perhaps you can subscribe to the conspiracy that Lombard knew they wouldn't hit 100 so he purposefully planted the 50 to 100 story, so that when they actually did not hit 100 in 4 weeks, he had a convenient spin story all set up. That way this all clearly shows iPhone sales suck, Lombard, Jobs and Teno are all spin masters. I think that makes perfect sense in some reality other than the current one.


The same goes for your example as well, its not the case in many places around the US. My example could be applied to most any major metropolitan areas around the country.


You keep picking around the notion of churn rates without giving any real information about it. ATT is said to have higher churn than Verizon but remains larger customer base than Verizon. Which means ATT looses more but also gains more. In the end what does it really mean?


They are smaller in raw population numbers. But these areas have much higher income, education, and job averages than most of the rest of the country. The iPhone will sell much better in San Francisco than some rural area in North Carolina. Or just about any rural area anywhere.

I've used my iPhone in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Atlanta. ATT coverage is a little better in some than others but it mostly works fine in all of them.

He's saying the perhaps is based on what Apple and their partners want. Is Apple selling the number of phones they want and making the amount of profit they want. Are Apple's partners gaining the amount of new subscribers that they want. Its not based on some arbitrary sales numbers you feel would make the iPhone a success.

Since you are not him, and his response was a one word "Perhaps" with no explanation attached, I'm going to say that you're unqualified to know what he really meant, and ignore your response here. Thanks.


.

Nah. If you weren't upset, you wouldn't be taking the regular sniffy cheapshots you do at me, Mel, Aegis, and anyone else who disagrees with you.

Buck up Teno... being wrong isn't the end of the world, y'know. You'll get other stuff right.



Sure. Like setting a goal of "slightly under 100,000 iPhones" in France, and missing it by nearly 30%. Or the unofficial reports out of the UK that show O2 missing its projections by large amounts.

Yep, not meeting sales goals is certainly a "narrow definition" all right.



Actually, you have been, by spinning non-stop about the iPhone even before its US launch. It's been quite something to see.



We actually agree here. But the problem is, where is the next iPhone? They need it ASAP, not mid-to-late '08.



I dunno... I think ppl were saying the very same thing right before Jobs decided to cough up the $100 credit to early iPhone adopters. Apparently what we think does matter, at least a little bit. And even if it didn't, I wouldn't have a problem telling it like it is, rather than spinning that Apple is infallible at the drop of a hat.



And yet we have direct quotes from reputable news sources on the very day he said it that have him setting a goal of "slightly under 100,000" iPhones sold. Hey, his words, not mine.

If you don't like it, take it up with Reuters and all the others, not me.



You want to think so, but it really can't be. In fact, looking at the latest Consumer Reports and JD Powers surveys, ATT consistently lost to both Verizon and even T-Mobile, both by region (JD Powers) and in most of the large metropolitan areas surveyed (Consumer Reports).

All carriers are not the same. Why should they be? Their native networks are not the same, the technologies used are not always the same, and roaming agreements only go so far.



Sigh. Teno, you argue so much on wireless issues that I sometimes forget that you really don't know much about them. To break it down:

Churn rates vary quarter to quarter, but Verizon's churn is usually close to 1%, which means that about 1% of their customers leave every month, which is a very low rate in the wireless industry.

ATT's churn has been averaging around 1.6% in recent months, overall. But ATT sometimes likes to give the postpaid-only number, which is lower (like around 1.3-1.4%), since that takes the high-churn prepaid customers out of the equation. Still, if you measured Verizon's churn the same way, it'd come out around 0.9%.

Why is that a big deal? Well, because with carriers the size of ATT and Verizon, the difference between a 1.4% churn rate and 0.9% is approximately one million more customers leaving you, every quarter.

Going on with the major carriers, Alltel's churn is quite similar to ATT's.

Sprint and T-Mobile have churn numbers in the 2 to 3% range, i.e. very bad. T-Mobile actually has the best customer service in the industry, and is good in metro areas, but they just don't have very good coverage. Outside of metro areas or major highways, you're more likely to have poor or no service with them, plus they have almost no 3G deployed as of yet.

Sprint on the other hand, is having major network problems, and their customer service is legendarily horrible. Their churn has been getting worse recently, and they're having a hard time attracting new customers, to the point where their number of postpaid customers is actually shrinking.

A nifty little chart on this can be found here:

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/...ate/2007-11-09



Not "said". They actually do have a higher churn rate than Verizon, by a significant margin. That's simply the stats reported by ATT and Verizon, quarter after quarter. Unless you'd care to try to spin that too? lol



ATT got their larger customer base via large acquisitions. For example, Cingular bought the old ATT Wireless for $41 billion back in 2004, which brought 21 million more customers on board (the resulting company just recently got rebranded 'ATT Mobility'... yeah, I know, confusing).

Recently they just bought Dobson, which will give them nearly 2 million more customers.

The funny thing is, even with their huge acquisitions, they're barely keeping ahead of Verizon. Back when the ATT-Cingular merger happened (late '04), the combined company had roughly 5.5 million more customers than Verizon. That lead dwindled to around 2 to 2.5 million customers in recent quarters, largely on the strength of Verizon's better churn rate/better customer retention.

It's not that Verizon is great everywhere... no one is (which is an argument against carrier exclusivity). But they do seem to be good in more areas than ATT is, based on national surveys and customer loyalty statistics.

However, the point would not be to replace ATT with Verizon. Rather it would be to have the iPhone available to both (and to T-Mobile, Sprint, Alltel, US Cellular, etc), so that any customer, anywhere, could get an iPhone and still pick the best carrier for their area and needs.

Simple, n'est pas?



For how long do you think Apple can maintain a strong sales pace by selling to only a relatively small slice of the population? Eventually all the big-city yuppies who care enough to want one will have one already, and again, that's only going to be in the particular big cities where ATT service is actually good. Gotta love those 30-day return policies that wireless carriers have.

It's kind of like opening an indie film in New York and LA only... fine for opening weekend and maybe a bit beyond, but you best get that thing on a whole lot more screens ASAP if you want to keep doing any real business.

Finally, don't count out North Carolina. Raleigh-Durham is a great area.



Tell that to my brother... he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, but recently dumped ATT for Verizon, because he couldn't stand the inconsistent call quality with ATT. I guess your anecdotes cancel one another out. \

The fact is, Teno, the US is a huge area to cover geographically, even if you were to concentrate primarily on the more densely-populated areas and major highways. The big carriers spend around $6 billion per year on their networks alone and STILL can't provide good coverage everywhere. So in the face of that enormous challenge, why would you assume that all carriers are good almost everywhere?

Just doesn't make sense, especially in light of the low satisfaction scores that are pervasive within the industry, as THT pointed out. It's not that all carriers suck (they don't), but simply that its really tough to meet consumer expectations, which are for wireless to be landline quality and landline reliability, EVERYWHERE, in a very vast country.

.

Actually it amazes me how we can look at the same information and see completely different results. All you guys want to see in the data is failure with little room for how it could be success.


Not meeting its sales projections does not automatically mean failure. None of the news reports about Orange has called its iPhone sales a failure.


Between 50 and 100 of course he hoped for 100. I don't see what the big deal is.


If it were only the people on internet chat boards that complained would Apple have given the credit?


OK I see what you are saying. But how does this compare to the number of customers they add each quarter? All of ATT new customers are not through acquisitions.


As though Verizon hasn't played the acquisition for growth game.

Verizon started from the Bell Atlantic and NYNEX merger to form Bell Atlantic Corporation and grew through acquisitions of:

-General Telephone and Electronics (GTE)
-The Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania
-New Jersey Bell Telephone Company
-The Diamond State Telephone Company
-The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company
-The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Maryland
-The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Virginia
-The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of West Virginia
-Bell Atlantic—Delaware, Inc.
-Bell Atlantic—Maryland, Inc.
-Bell Atlantic—New Jersey, Inc.
-Bell Atlantic—Pennsylvania, Inc.
-Bell Atlantic—Virginia, Inc.
-Bell Atlantic—Washington, D.C., Inc.
-Bell Atlantic—West Virginia, In

Verizon's latest acquisitions were of Key Communications - West Virginia Wireless, Ramcell in Oregon and Kentucky, and Rural Cellular Unicel.

That isn't true as we've proven already with N95 sales figures and Viewty figures for Europe. USA is doing better but Apple have no real competition there.


But that's not how Jobs framed success when announcing the iPhone. He announced it as 1% marketshare, not profit, not new subscribers. It's just as well US sales are doing well as they'll not get there with European sales.

I guess that's what happens when you miss sales goals. Silly us.



Long-term, its not a failure. Short-term, yeah, it kinda is. Man up and face it... I'm sure Apple is.



His actual quote was "slightly under 100,000", a goal which they missed by a substantial margin. But this has been explained to you already, so I guess you're being willfully obtuse here.



Obviously, all the sites and all the ppl who emailed Apple and Jobs played a role. I think the more important question is, if everyone had just knuckled under and went "Apple knows best", would they have given the credit? Hell no. \



Wow, finally.



Net adds per quarter for ATT tend to be around 4 to 4.5 million customers. They lose around 3 million customers a quarter, for net adds of 1 to 1.5 million, on average. Holiday quarters are better.

Do you start to see how churn rates are actually a pretty big deal? \



Verizon's acquistions after its formation have been small potatoes, certainly nothing on the scope of Cingular's acquisition of 21 million ATTW customers.

There was of course the 'beeg' merger back in 2000, the one that actually FORMED Verizon (which is most of the companies and assets you list, actually), but since then their growth has primarily been 'organic', from net adding more customers than anyone else.

ATT can't say the same, they've definitely been acquisition-fueled, i.e. they BUY their customers in large part. Which is a big part of why they were particularly desperate to do the iPhone deal with Apple, actually.

But hey, don't take my word for it, look it up. You'll find that Verizon has out-net-added ATT by at least 3 million customers since the ATTW-Cingular merger of late '04. And they were doing it before the merger too, only I'm unsure of by exactly how much off the top of my head.

It's good that you're trying to catch up on the wireless history though.

.

Nothing against N.C. Just simple fact that people don't make as much money there as people in the major cities.


I don't live in S.F. so I cannot certainly cannot discount your brothers claims. All I can say is I didn't have any problems. The place where I had some inconsistent service has been in L.A.


I did not say they were all good in every part of the US. But they do all spend large amounts of money for spectrum and towers in the largest metropolitan cities.


Signal coverage isn't often the main factor. For many its price.

That may prove true when ever we see the iPhone's total Euro sales.


We still have yet to see iPhone European marketshare. Well Apple products in general sell better in the US than the rest of the world, so that's no surprise.

The Cingular/ATT merger was basically akin to Bell Atlantic/NYNEX merger for Verizon. Dobson has been their next largest merger. What other large acquisitions have they made?

True, but Teno tends to ignore information he doesn't like.



Yup. Jobs' publicly announced goal was 1% worldwide marketshare, or 10 million iPhones sold in '08.



That's exactly the problem. US sales alone won't meet Jobs' goal (even as good as they are), so the iPhone needs to do reasonably well in Europe and Asia. And so far, not so good on that front. \

Which is why most reasonable ppl would like to see the pricing and feature-set issues addressed sooner rather than later.

.

ATT is actually semi-dreadful in the SF Bay Area. They're well known here for garbled calls, and more than their fair share of drops.



But not in every metropolitan city. All carriers rely on roaming partners to varying extents to have a presence in many of their markets, in part or in whole. And even where they do spend the bucks, the results often vary.



If that were true, T-Mobile would be #1, or at least they'd be out-adding everyone in customers. But they're the smallest of the national carriers, actually, and while their net adds are good, Verizon always beats them, and ATT usually does so. Also, ATT and Verizon have very similar pricing on their voice plans, actually. So yeah, things like call quality, coverage, 3G deployment, customer service, billing issues, etc. matter a great deal.

.

You asked me why ATT has more customers than Verizon, and I answered truthfully: it was due to some pretty huge acquisitions. If you wish a breakdown of said acquisitions, just look in the same place you found the listing of Verizon's founding companies from.

Again (and perhaps you didn't understand the first time)... since 2000, when it was formed, Verizon's growth has been mostly organic, via net adding a lot of customers. ATT's growth in that time frame, on the other hand, has largely been acquisition-based.

ATT is trying to change that, as buying customers is quite expensive. Hence, the iPhone deal.

.

Apple probably won't break down their iPhone sales so this argument will probably rage on for a while.

IPhone's European sales have been pretty negatively reported since the first launch figures started trickling in. And then everyone started chiming in with their reasons for 'missed targets". High price, expensive contracts, no 3G, no GPS etc. Bottom line ends up with "Apple goofed", "dropped the ball", "underestimated" etc etc.

The thing is there is nothing new here. We heard all these criticisms of the IPhone over a year ago when Steve Jobs introduced it. Anyone who new anything about the cell phone markets here in Europe and over in Asia new that it was going to be a tougher sell.

Do you guys really believe that there is no one at Apple or it's carrier partners (even the carriers it didn't partner with!) that has some kind of idea about the markets outside the US. I don't.

I disagree with the idea that the (temporary) success or failure of the iPhone in Europe can be judged by whether or not it reached targets announced by the carriers. These figures themselves are subject to some doubt.... and they weren't announced by Apple.

Here's a question for you guys who are disappointed with iPhone's Euro figures.

What figure (that implies success) would you expect to see from the combined sales in the UK, France and Germany for the last quarter of 2007?

Some data that might be useful:

US sales:- 1 million in 74 days (13.5k per day)
Population percentages compared to US:- UK 20%; France 20%; Germany 27%
Number of days on sale:- UK and Germany 53 days. France 33 days
Other smart phone sales in Europe:- RIM 470K Windows Mobile 760K
NOTE. Those smart phone sales are for Q3 2007 and are for EMEA (I cant' find a European breakdown) That's all of Europe, east and west, Middle East and Africa.
SOURCE. Canalys.

NOTE 2. I have missed out the 800lb gorilla, Symbian ( and therefore Nokia)
NOTE 3. T-Mobile in Germany fecked up the iPhone launch with plans that were 40% higher than all the other iPhone reates. They recently slached those costs.

My point is. that some people were disappointed with iPhone's US sales only to subsequently find that iPhone had sold better than ALL the Windows Mobile powered smart phones. Could the same thing be happening (or nearly in Europe?

I don't take speculation and rumor to be fact just because it supports what I want. The official iPhone numbers are still missing from Europe.


At this points this is all speculation. Right now we don't yet know how many iPhones have sold in the US let alone in Europe.


Coverage maps are always dense around the major cities. Before you say those maps are meaningless. Unless you've tried every carrier in every market how do you know?






Who adds the most customers is not the only benchmark of success. Even though Verizon and ATT are the largest does not mean that everyone wants to use them. Sprint and T-Mobile have loyal customers also. I know plenty people who like T-Mobile because of its price.

As you walk through life you encounter people who use all of the carriers. I cannot say that I know more people who use one carrier or the other. The churn rates are just switching of chairs. I know people who have tried all of the major carriers. Just as many people hate Verizon as people hate ATT.


Verizon has also made key mergers and acquisitions in its time. All of those over time have added up to millions of new customers. I do see that Verizons lower tunrover rate helps maintain its marketshare.


Yes I understood that. Outside of the ATT/Cingular merger and Dobson what other huge acquisitions have they made?

Quite possibly but WinMo, Palm and RIM are the low hanging fruit. They've very small niches. As you said yourself, in Europe, Symbian is the 800lb gorilla.

Symbian shipped 20.4 million smartphones in Q3 2007, mostly in Europe. That's twice as many smartphones as Apple sold iPods in the same period to put it in perspective.

Agreed. But sorry to labour the point ..... WinMo Palm and Rim have been in the market for a number of years, sell multiple models, through multiple carriers in many more countries. If Apple can shake down some of the low hanging fruit in just a few months it's a pretty good start.

Just saw a story from Net Applications iPhone browser use jumped 89% from November thru December. At the end of December world wide iPhone browser use was at .17%. Beating all other mobile browsers and nipping at the lower PC browser numbers.

At the end of December iPhone browser share for US was .27%, UK .11%, France .1%


I think this is a good point.

Actually that's not totally accurate. Just under half off those were sold in EMUA, maybe a little less than 10 million. That's in 90 days in ALL of Europe, middle east and Africa. How would that equate to just 33 days in France alone? My rough guess.... about 360K. Could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time!

Apple iPhone outsells LG Prada, HTC Touch, Nokia N95 in Europe

"We previously mentioned that the iPhone has shown disappointing sales figures in the UK, but it seems that even laggard iPhones sales on UKs O2 network are still outselling rivals. In fact, all three European markets are reportedly seeing sales of the iPhone outpacing those of its closest, and highly subsidized, competitors.."

I still take this as speculation until official numbers are released.

And as I pointed out the last time you quoted that, those are year old phones that have been superseded by newer models. But, Nokia's figures say otherwise anyway with 1.5 million N95 sales in it's first full quarter (not it's first quarter, it's first FULL quarter). Apple sold 1.1m iPhones in it's first quarter. Figures from Nokia and Canalsys.

What are the new versions of the Touch and the LG Prada? The report doesn't specify if they are talking about the old N95 or the newer with 8GB of memory.


The N95 should outsell the iPhone. The N95 first quarter was on multiple carriers in multiple countries. The iPhone first quarter was in one country on one carrier and only sold 400,000 less.

I've been trying to stay out. Oh well, just this one.

Apple's first quarter was just with ATT. What would be the total number of customers in the European launch that the phone could sell to?

Actually, they're not entirely. We have numbers from Orange in France that don't look very good, and support the unofficial numbers which state that the Euro iPhone launch was indeed lackluster. But that dose of reality doesn't fit in with your spin, so you disregard it. Tsk.



Holding on to the dream, eh, Teno?



LOL. Don't tell me you fell for the oldest one in the book Teno. Coverage maps are widely known in the industry to be BS. It's just a given.

Look Teno, even you, a wireless industry newbie, can figure this one out. Carrier coverage maps are... err... shall we say, "very optimistic". The idea is that prospective customers looking at them will go, "Oh lookie, I'm covered by that carrier, I should give them a try." Well, maybe they're covered, maybe they're covered marginally, or maybe they're covered extremely poorly... you don't know until you actually try the service.

A good example is an experience I had in '05, when I travelled to a town in Southern Oregon. My coverage map said I had native coverage there, but I didn't, I was actually roaming on analog on another carrier. I still got service, but my battery life went to hell, since analog sucks way more power. \

I went back in late '07, and I did finally have native network digital coverage there, so the map was right... two years later.

Other friends of mine have had similar experiences on other carriers, including, yup, ATT. It's pretty common.

The coverage maps, from any carrier, are extremely hit-or-miss, with the possible exception of T-Mobile's 'street level' coverage maps, and I've heard mixed results regarding even those. \



You stated that price was a big concern in choosing a carrier. I simply stated that if that were the overriding concern, T-Mobile would be out-adding everyone. They're not, not even close. Therefore, other factors, such as call quality, coverage, customer service, billing, 3G coverage, etc play a role. Stating that all carriers have their loyal customers does not contradict that... they obviously do.

What you're saying actually supports a different point I've made, which is that no carrier is good everywhere. Because, by the same token, no carrier is bad everywhere. Even the worst-rated carriers will have some areas where they provide good service, and in those areas, yes, they will have loyal customers.

Which is not to say that T-Mobile or Sprint totally suck, even with their high churn... although Sprint is definitely having a great many problems of late, to the point where their CEO was recently forced to resign.



Maybe VZW has as many haters as ATT, that's possible, though anecdotal. What we do know, from churn figures, is that quarter after quarter, Verizon loses customers at a considerably slower rate than ATT, i.e., Verizon has significantly higher customer loyalty than ATT. That's simply a fact, and its been true for several years now, i.e. is not a one quarter statistical blip.



As you've been told, the only really big merger Verizon did was the one that actually FORMED them, back in 2000. Since then, if you were total up the number of new customers brought in by acquisitions, ATT would far outpace VZW in that department, obviously due to the huge acquisition of ATT Wireless by Cingular. That's not really arguable, its just what happened.



Great. Though actually Verizon's low churn has increased its marketshare, and narrowed the gap in total customers with ATT considerably. In fact, Verizon actually has MORE postpaid (i.e under contract) customers than ATT. But ATT has more prepaid customers than VZW, so they're a couple million ahead overall.



As I told you elsewhere, look it up. You found the founding companies of VZW pretty easily.

In any case, why would you need more acquisitions to prove my point? Its pretty obvious that since VZW's founding, ATT has gotten a lot more customers through acquisitions than VZW has... the ATT-Cingular merger was enormous, inarguably so.

.

I'd like to see them hit their Euro sales goals, for starters. So far, they appear to be missing them.

Additionally, given Apple's publicly stated goal of selling 10 million iPhones in '08, and that roughly half of that will likely be US sales, plus the fact that the Asian launch won't occur until the middle or later part of the year... I would say Apple needs to sell around 3 to 3.5 million iPhones in Europe in '08 to be sure of making their worldwide sales goal.

Extrapolating November/December Euro sales to see what the sales pace is would be misleading, however. Remember than in the US, the launch pace was something like 90k phones/day, but the in Q3 we saw that slow to 13k phones per day... a sevenfold slowdown. Still a good pace though.

That said, a good launch does serve a nice springboard to (hopefully) solid future sales. By the same token, a lackluster launch may hurt future sales, as potential Euro customers look on and go, "My, that certainly landed with a resounding thud." \

So, to answer your question, in the short-term I'd like to see them hit their Euro sales goals. So far in France, they've already missed them, by a good margin. For Q1, I'd like to see them sell around 800K iPhones, for all Euro areas combined. For November/December, I'd like to see them sell at a pace considerably higher than that, as launch pace is always going to be a lot higher than steady-state sales.



I'm reasonably happy with US sales, but not because they exceed Windows Mobile sales, since Windows Mobile is something of a joke. Microsoft has been in the market for several years, with all their tremendous resources to call upon, yet their worldwide marketshare in smartphones is around 5 to 6%. Not very impressive for big daddy Microsoft. \

As someone else mentioned, I believe Symbian is actually the 800 lb gorilla in the room, if we're talking software. Not in the US so much, but their worldwide sales are quite a goal to shoot for.

.

Wow... you seem to be agreeing that going multicarrier (in the US) would improve iPhone sales. Amazing, we actually agree on something.

.

Combined populations of the UK (61m), Germany (82m), and France (61m) are 204 million, or a bit less than 70% of the US's population. However, cellphone penetration rates are higher in Europe than the US, significantly so:

Western Europe is on pace to have a 100% mobile phone penetration rate in 2007 according to research firm Analysys. For comparison, the US is expected to have 65% penetration by the end of the year. Many countries already have penetration rates above 100% as consumers start to use multiple phones.

http://www.mobiletracker.net/archive...le-penetration


Basically, a higher percentage of ppl in the Euro area have cellphones than do in the US, and a higher percentage of ppl in Europe use multiple carriers than do in the US.

That said, that article is from mid-'05, and US penetration rates have actually turned out to be higher than 65 percent, actually more like 80 percent. But it is true that Europe's penetration rate is still much higher than the US's. In fact, much more recent articles put Europe's current penetration rate at close to 110 percent (!), which is due to some some customers being multicarrier.

http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/newslog...ry,Europe.aspx


Given that Europe's mobile penetration rate is about a third higher than that of the US, which cancels out most of the population disparity, the total wireless market size of the UK + Germany + France would be around 90 percent of the US market's size, give or take a little.

That's not taking things like average revenue per user into account, in other words, more like number of lines of service/phones in service than how much moolah everyone's making.


.

That's not what I meant. I know the population sizes.

What I was talking about was the number of people who could have bought the phone in the first quarter, and used it.

In the US, we just have ATT, with about 60 million customers average over that first quarter. What was the comparable number of people that the carriers in Europe have? Forgetting, for the moment, the people buying them to use outside of the carrier, because we had plenty of that here as well, though, in both places, it's a minority.

If there were more people able to buy the phone, then the numbers are even worse than they seem. If there are fewer people, then the numbers are better.

Get it?

You may have known population sizes, but I doubt you knew specifics about the penetration rate disparity.

It can be hard to go with the method you suggest, since some will argue that the iPhone is so gosh-darn-terrific that some people will pay the early termination fee and jump carriers to get it. In that scenario, its really market size vs market size, though of course, I'm sure most carrier migration occurs with ppl whose contracts are ending with another carrier, not those who pay a big ETF through the nose. But we have heard some pretty big whoppers on the spin side of this discussion, haven't we?

What you can do, as you said, is look up the size of the launch carriers Apple used in Europe, combine them, and compare that to ATT's size. Or did you have something else beyond that in mind too?

.

For many consumers price is a bigger concern than coverage and 3G. Lets look at it this way. Verizon and ATT have the largest number of business customers. Narrow down to only consumers and I'm sure the marketshare numbers will shift, the leads are not as dramatic. Narrow it down to specific markets and the numbers completely change. For example looking at the 25 and under age group, I seriously doubt Verizon nor ATT lead, I would bet T-Mobile and Sprint are very successful in that group.


That's my point I cannot find these huge ATT acquisitions you speak of. What I find is that both have made key acquisitions that have added customers and bandwidth.


Orange France hitting 100,000 sales in the second week of January 08 instead of the last week of December 07. This is your rational that iPhone sales are slow?


Well more carriers certainly improves the odds, where have you ever seen me say they wouldn't? 1.1 million in the first quarter is a good number. If Apple had sold the phone through multiple US carriers the iPhone experience would be inconsistent and more expensive than it currently is.

It is much better for Apple to establish the iPhone and its expectations. Then expand it to carriers that agree to its terms.