More growth numbers for prepaid
65 percent of new net wireless adds in the fourth quarter were prepaid. Even better, we got some overall subscriber numbers for the bigger prepaid carriers. Not to be outdone by IDC Research, New Millennium Research Council released some more numbers yesterday. They cited the nearly two-thirds number, which we already knew. THey added, though, that the prepaid sector grew 54 percent during the fourth quarter, while postpaid grew just three percent. That’s to be expected, of course, considering prepaid accounts for roughly 18 percent of the overall U.S. wireless market. New Millennium believes that this trend “will continue into the first quarter of 2010 and will continue after the recession. With rumors of a new iPhone, including one on Verizon, plus a slew of Android handsets coming out this year, I’m not so sure about that. ]]>
2010 is the year of the smartphone indeed. News of equipment releases almost daily with all the options. People ares till going to shop the mobile service plans, maybe now more than ever. Watch out for WOW Mobile, no data caps, limits or contract. Contract-based service plans are on the slides, down ‘n out.
The iPhone (and other top-end smartphones) will continue to draw a relatively small number of people into contracts but I think for the most part people are going to be looking more critically at cell contracts in the future. It will probably end up being a very polarized marketplace with expensive, data-hungry phones on the one end and cheaper phones on simple plans on the other end.
The cheap end will probably become totally dominated by prepaid phones where competition is fierce and customers can switch easily from one carrier to the next to take advantage of special offers etc.
Anyway, I already use a prepaid phone (NET10) because of that reason – I don’t need a smartphone and like the lower price and the ability to walk away from a phone if I want or have to. Just my two cent’s worth…