AT&T iPhones Beat Verizon On Speed, Verizon iPhones Beat AT&T On Sales – Barely
Remember the life altering release of the iPhone on Verizon? It seems that it hasn’t altered as many lives as expected.
So how did that first week go?
According to Wired, data from the Speedtest.net iPhone app shows that AT&T iPhone data transfer rates were roughly 2 times faster than those of the Verizon iPhone.
There are a few caveats though; the post notes “results did not provide data on coverage reliability or dropped connections,” and the number of AT&T phones providing data outnumbered the Verizon iPhones providing data 3 to 1.
When it comes to sales of that Verizon iPhone, it’s still attractive to new buyers but not in the overwhelming numbers many anticipated.
Boy Genius Report published sales figures from the first 5 days of the Verizon iPhone’s initial launch that “are performing a little under what Apple and Verizon anticipated.”
- Thursday: Verizon = 909, AT&T = 539
- Friday: Verizon = 916, AT&T = 680
- Saturday: Verizon = 660, AT&T = 471
- Sunday: Verizon = 796, AT&T = 701
- Monday: Verizon = 711, AT&T = 618
On the first day, the five Apple stores included in this data (including “very, very prominent” Apple stores which we can guess refer to their San Francisco and New York stores) were selling 68% more Verizon iPhones than AT&T iPhones, but by that Monday the difference in sales shrunk considerably, though the Verizon iPhone is still slightly more popular.
Perhaps that’s because AT&T’s fees helped to stem any mass exodus of customers. According to BGR:
30% of people buying Verizon iPhones were Android users, just over 25% of people buying iPhone 4 were BlackBerry users, and only 14% of people buying the Verizon iPhone were AT&T iPhone owners. The remaining percent didn’t want to say, didn’t have a smartphone, or didn’t have a phone prior to making their iPhone 4 purchases last week.
Now these numbers don’t take into account the estimated 550,000 pre-sales made online, or sales from Verizon stores, but overall it seems to actually be a good thing for Apple.
The fact that people are still buying AT&T iPhones with 2 options available means that even if demand is less than anticipated, the Verizon iPhone represents a new market, not one entirely cannibalized from existing AT&T customers. The real test will come when the next generation iPhones are released though.
