iPhone sales increase, but they’re not stealing Verizon customers

“We have the better network.”
“But we have the better phone.”
If you want the gist of AT&T and Verizon’s little battle since the release of the iPhone, there you have it. The companies have continued to release information — sometimes contradictory to each other — that states their service is doing just fine, iPhone or no iPhone. It’s a silly ordeal, really, almost like a bunch of 5th graders competing over who has the better tree house (we totally had the best one when we were in 5th grade). Yesterday, Vodaphone, co-owners of the Verizon network, and AT&T released separate statements regarding the price cut of the iPhone.

AT&T says that the 33% price cut on the iPhone has resulted in greater sales. Whoa! You mean to tell us that since you cut two-hundred freakin’ dollars from the price of a phone, you sold more of them? You don’t say. How this story didn’t make the front page of the New York Times is beyond us.

AT&T also made a statement that the price cut slowed growth at Verizon. Ah, the joy of zero-sum games.

Meanwhile, Vodaphone announced that Verizon isn’t reeling in the slightest from the iPhone’s release or its price cut. They claim that its porting ratios went negative right after the iPhone release, and then again right after the price cut. But both times they saw the rates return to normal levels.

“Porting ratios go negative then two weeks later were back to normal again,” Vodaphone CEO Arun Sarin comments. Vodafone’s figures do not, however, make any reference to how many new cellular subscribers the iPhone may have lured in AT&T’s direction.

Here’s a quick formula, since Vodaphone won’t devise one. Take all the numbers you port to AT&T. Now take 95 percent of that number. That’s how many customers you lost to the iPhone. Warning: Method not scientific…or accurate.

So, how many specific numbers did we see in either article? A big fat zero. Good job, guys. You just vaguely made your point.

It’s like monkeys flinging poo…

[Electronista] [Bloomberg]

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