Are smaller carriers on the rise? One analyst seems to think so.
Iain Gillott is the president and founder of iGR, a mobile industry consultancy group, and a study from his firm suggests that smaller carriers will make key gains in the mobile industry over the next few years. Regional carriers such as U.S. Cellular, MetroPCS, Leap Wireless, nTelos, and others currently represent less than 10% of U.S. smartphone sales. According to Gillott, as consumer demand for smartphones increases, the number of smartphone owners on these smaller second-tier networks will be about 19% by 2016.
Many of these carriers lag a few months to a few years behind the major 4 U.S. carriers when it comes to getting the latest smartphones available; several of the previously named companies have only recently started carrying Apple’s iPhone 4S, which went on sale last October. As smartphone availability on these carriers continues to grow, Mr. Gillott believes more customers will choose these less-costly networks. Further, as the cost of rate plans declines, customers already on these networks could more readily adopt smartphones.
The growth will likely come from U.S. Cellular and MetroPCS, larger carriers that are rolling out faster LTE networks. One of the biggest complaints from consumers who have adopted smartphones is the slow data speeds associated with 3G networks, and as cellular data speeds approach that of in-home broadband internet, more and more users will adopt smartphones, and may trend towards these smaller networks which offer smartphones for less upfront costs.
[via FierceWireless]