Here in The States, the two Big Boys on the wireless network block are Verizon and Cingular. Verizon is representing the CDMA side of their neighborhood and Cingular is holding down its GSM territory. It’s been a rumble and tumble battle, but for the most part, it’s been an even war. But today, the marketing research gurus at IDC gave Verizon the lead. According to analyst Julien Blin, “Verizon became the new market leader in terms of total direct retail subscribers/customers, with a total of 56.8 million, against 56.3 million for Cingular.” And Verizon is the leader in ARPU (average revenue per user) data revenue and data use percentage.
Sprint Nextel, still trying to turn its Nextel acquisition into plus territory, got a boost to their ego – and bottom line – with IDC declaring them the ARPU leader in blended data (email, text, and other non-voice services) over Verizon.