Smaller US carriers sell the iPhone not to increase revenue but to gain prestige

[dgstorm]

The US mobile market is dominated by giant carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon but that doesn’t mean that smaller regional carriers don’t exist across the American territory. Seven of them even started providing the iPhone to their customers earlier this year.

Pat Riordan, CEO of small carrier Cellcom, that covers the eastern Wisconsin and northwestern Michigan area, has talked to GigaOM and tried to explain why the company decided to include the iPhone in their portfolio.

Even if Riordan didn’t come forward with any specific sales numbers, he states that selling the iPhone is not really about numbers but about prestige. It makes sense since the Cellcom’s numbers wouldn’t be even close to the one registered by major carriers. Nevertheless since the company decided to bring in the iPhone a lot of customers have signed deals with them.

“Customers were telling us they were simply going to leave us because we didn’t have the iPhone. We know our sales had been falling between the end of the year and April, and we think not having the iPhone was the reason,” explained Riordan.
The article mentions however that another small carrier, Alaska Communications managed to sell 11,000 iPhones for the second quarter of 2012. That’s impressive considering they have a consumer based made up of 120,000 people. Also from Alaska, GCI reported selling 9, 200 iPhones. The company has 141,000 customers. These numbers are tiny in compared to the million devices sold by AT&T or Verizon, but nevertheless to small business they bring a substantial boost in revenue.

By Radu

Source: To small carriers the iPhone is about prestige, not activations — Apple News, Tips and Reviews

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[am78]

My cell provider is a regional company that's a sister to Verizon .... It's the main 4G carrier in the area I live and I was 9th in line of all the madness back on April the 20th the first day they launched the iPhone in their stores.... They were always popular for their awesome prices on service packages but the iPhone made them come full circle for sure...

Sent from my iPad 3 using iPF.net

[vipz]

I have asked my cousin in U.S. to get me one iphone 4S priced $199 with any carrier.

1. how will it affect him, if he brings that iphone to South Africa immediately after the purchase and discontinued say AT&T’s servive. ?????

2. along with $199 price of the phone, how much i needed to pay for att&t to get an iphone?????

thanks & regards
vipz