Failing Up
January 22nd, 2013 - 2:08 pm
Verizon just reported its Q4 numbers, and they’re astonishing:
It sold 7.3 million LTE devices the last three months of 2012, and it activated 9.8 million smartphones in total. It activated 6.2 million iPhones, about half of which were the LTE-enabled iPhone 5.
iPhone represented two-thirds of Verizon’s smartphone sales, even though the company is known for having its reps push customers — hard — towards Android devices. That’s up almost ten points from Verizon’s 2011 holiday quarter. Meanwhile, iPhone now represents over 51% of US smartphone sales.
Expect Tim Cook to announce yet another blowout quarter tomorrow, while the tech pundits continue to fret over Apple’s dim future.
What’s quite nice about Verizon, is that they actually built out their LTE network. I get amazing speeds on my iPhone 5 everywhere I go. Which is the exact opposite of every other network that carries it– and yes, I’ve used them all.
I bet they’re still kicking themselves over not having played ball from the start, though.
My wife just upgraded her iPhone 4 to a 5 and you ain’t lying about the Verizon reps trying to push people to Android. She said the rep was pretty rude when she told him she wanted an iPhone and wasn’t interested in an Android.
Over at Asymco a while back, wireless expert Horace Dediu ran the numbers for Samsung, and they spend about ten times more than Apple on ads and promotions. A lot of those expenses consists of incentives to carriers like Verizon, and spiffs to sales reps like the one your wife had to deal with.