prepaid wireless played a big part in American mobile services in the first quarter. There are signs, too, that this could continue. Web analysts comScore found that traffic to six prepaid carrier websites was up big time during the first quarter.
The full chart can be seen below:
The only websites to see negative gains were
Virgin Mobile, which
lost subscribers in the first quarter, and
Tracfone, which also owns
Net10, which showed a substantial gain.
The gains at
MetroPCS,
Cricket, and
Boost Mobile are understandable. Both Metro and Cricket opened service in a few new markets over the first quarter, meaning their websites will reach more people. Boost, for their part, released their $50 unlimited plan, which surely attracted tons of visitors. In fact, the Web traffic for these sites might have come at the expense of Virgin and Tracfone.
Will this translate into second quarter results? That’ll be an interesting thing to observe. Wireless subscriptions typically fade in the second and third quarters, but given this environment we could see some gains in prepaid over that period. The second quarter is just a couple weeks from closing, so we should have our answer soon enough.]]>
