At 06 Oct 2008 19:39:46 -0700 iPhone 3Gold wrote:
> iPhone is hot, picking off rival carriers' customers and smartphones...


Sort of. If you reference the actual NPD report that ALL TWENTY-SEVEN of
the blogs you quoted actually reference, yes, 30% of iPhone buyers have
defected from other carriers.

However, 23% of ALL American cellphone customers switched carriers in the
same
period (June-Aug. 2008), so the "30%" number isn't as shocking as it might
sound without any context.

Verizon and AT&T's churn numbers will be far more telling, IMO, when
released shortly- did more Verizon customers hop to AT&T for an iPhone, or
did more AT&T customers defect to Verizon for "The Network" despite AT&T's
exclusive on the 2nd best-selling phone in the market.


Also, it's interesting to note that NPD's report was based on consumer data
only. To quote NPD, "Sales figures do not include corporate/enterprise
mobile phone sales." While that certainly doesn't dull the luster of
Apple's success with the 3G, I only mention it to forewarn we'll likely see
conflicting reports shortly if/when RIM claims they were the top selling
smartphone in that quarter, because they'll include Enterprise data and
aggregate individual model sales.