Despite AT&T’s eight-month head start over Verizon when Apple released the Phone 4 last summer, mobile consumers still flocked to the nation’s largest wireless carrier to an astounding degree upon the iPhone’s debut on the Verizon network earlier this year.
Today, nearly one-third (32%) of all iPhone 4s in the US are on the Verizon network. That’s according to analytics company Localytics.
Localytics, which published its findings on Thursday, is adding further credibility to the widespread belief that customers had grown weary with the limited carrier option of AT&T in the US.
Consequently, in the first quarter of 2011, Verizon sold an unbelievable 2.2 million iPhones – more than two full quarters after the fourth-generation Apple smartphone took the mobile world by storm.
And in recent months, the public appetite for Verizon’s iPhone has only expanded, although the Localytics report acknowledges one particularly logical and timely reason for the recent sales boost.
During the last month, customers have had one final shot at Verizon’s unlimited data plan, which ends this week. AT&T similarly ended its unlimited data plan last summer, another factor that likely drove many would-be iPhone buyers to Verizon.
Although the iPhone 5’s pending release is expected to heighten the battle for customers between AT&T and Verizon to an entirely new degree, clues are beginning to surface that Sprint may become the third carrier to get the iPhone in the US this fall.
On Wednesday, Citadel Securities analyst Shing Yin told investors that the next-gen iPhone will possibly call Sprint home before the end of 2011.
