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Verizon Activates 3.9 Million iPhones in Q3 2013, Just Over Half of All Smartphone Activations

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Verizon today became the first of the major U.S mobile carriers to report financial results for the third quarter for 2013, giving the first piece of data to help shed light on Apple's early iPhone 5s and 5c sales other than an Apple press release announcing nine million units sold on the launch weekend.

The carrier revealed during its conference call that it activated approximately 3.9 million iPhones during the quarter, representing just over half of Verizon's 7.6 million total smartphone activations during the quarter, and up from 3.1 million iPhone activations in the year-ago quarter. Verizon also noted in the call that it encountered iPhone supply constraints in September, which will also result in some carryover in sales to the fourth quarter.

verizon_q32013.png
Verizon also reported that it has now covered "over 99% of its 3G footprint" with LTE, as the network is now in over 500 markets with more small towns being added in the coming months. Overall, the carrier stated that there were 6.8 million 4G LTE device activations on its network in the quarter, up 21.1% when compared to the year-ago quarter.

Finally, Verizon announced that smartphones now account for more than 67% of the Verizon Wireless retail postpaid customer phone base, up from 64% at the end of the second-quarter in 2013.

Apple will announce its quarterly earnings on October 28.

Article Link: Verizon Activates 3.9 Million iPhones in Q3 2013, Just Over Half of All Smartphone Activations
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/17/verizon-activates-3-9-million-iphones-in-q3-2013-just-over-half-of-all-smartphone-activations/
bummer that they didn't provide a breakdown of 5C and 5S.
 
I was one of them... I switched from Sprint's unlimited-but-unusable data plan to a tiered Verizon plan shared on my wife's account; turns out I don't use as much data as I thought I did, but it's nice to have a data connection that actually works when I need it to.
 
so that would mean 800,000 non LTE phones were activated. That seems low to me as it would cover many budget smartphones plus the iphone 4S. 4S sales must be pretty slow
 
Next year the 5C will make more sense as the budget model, 5S the intermediate, and the 4.8" iPhone 6 the premier beast.

It's just like printing money for Apple. Crazy good situation to be in.
 
newdeal said:
so that would mean 800,000 non LTE phones were activated. That seems low to me as it would cover many budget smartphones plus the iphone 4S. 4S sales must be pretty slow
Click to expand...

Half of those are probably 4S sales. Add that with other carriers that's way over a million. Then add the rest of the world and they are selling a lot of 2 year old phones in just a 3 month period IMO.
 
Allowing grandfathered unlimited data customers retain their data plan for that one week window certainly helped boost the number.
 
Santabean2000 said:
Next year the 5C will make more sense as the budget model, 5S the intermediate, and the 4.8" iPhone 6 the premier beast.

It's just like printing money for Apple. Crazy good situation to be in.
Click to expand...

5s, just like the 5, will not live more than one year.

5c will, and they will probably release a 'new' iPhone 5Sc with 5s internals and a plastic package.
 
Horray! Very, very rich companies getting richer.

Meanwhile, inside the cellular service companies:

"Increase those executive bonuses for a job well done!"

"Can we tighten the tiers and/or arbitrarily re-jigger our offers to squeeze more money out of the lemmings?"

"And someone call Apple and encourage them to make some more "major apps" like iRadio that encourages data burn through cellular data tiers faster than ever. I want that bonus to go up again next year"

"What! Podunk, <state> is trying to install city-wide free wifi? Quick sick the lawyers on that and let's make some strategic campaign contributions to kill that initiative."

Etc.
 
DougTheImpaler said:
Other than the iPhone 4S and dumbphones I don't think Verizon sells non-LTE phones anymore.
Click to expand...

They likely have a couple of low end android or windows phone models that don't have LTE also, I just tried to look through their devices but they have so many and the layout is so odd its hard to do it
 
Why can't they at least tell us the number of phones sold rather than activated?
I know the iPhone has the best resale of any phone out there, and people don't usually throw their old phone in the trash when they upgrade.
How skewed can the second hand market affect these numbers?
I mean, what technically blocks them from releasing those numbers?
 
jonAppleSeed said:
Why can't they at least tell us the number of phones sold rather than activated?
I know the iPhone has the best resale of any phone out there, and people don't usually throw their old phone in the trash when they upgrade.
How skewed can the second hand market affect these numbers?
I mean, what technically blocks them from releasing those numbers?
Click to expand...

I would imagine if they sell an iPhone and it isn't activated on Verizon's network then Verizon doesn't really benefit from that sale (but Apple of course would), so why report it... Their money comes from phones that are activated w/ Verizon and thus the customer then pays Verizon for their monthly phone service. Wall Street is interested in activations I'd imagine.
 
Help!

Here's a question for you Verizon guys...

I'm thinking of making the jump from an iPhone 4 on AT&T to a 5s (or next year a 6) on Verizon's LTE network. When you're on LTE, can you do simultaneous phone & data? I use that all the time.

What happens if you lose your LTE signal? Does this happen often?

Any help is appreciated.
 
jonAppleSeed said:
Why can't they at least tell us the number of phones sold rather than activated?
I know the iPhone has the best resale of any phone out there, and people don't usually throw their old phone in the trash when they upgrade.
How skewed can the second hand market affect these numbers?
I mean, what technically blocks them from releasing those numbers?
Click to expand...

They use activations because it gives bigger numbers :)

Going by previous quarters, activations of previously owned iPhones should account for about 11% of the total activations.

That would make NEW iPhone sales ~= 3.5 million. Still pretty good.

From that, it's anybody's guess of 5S/5C ratio, but if the surveys are right, then the breakdown is about:

  • 64% 5S = 2.2 million (ignore totals ... see BaldiMac's response below)
  • 27% 5C = 900K
  • 09% 4S = 315K
 
Last edited:
kdarling said:
That would make NEW iPhone sales ~= 3.5 million. Still pretty good.

From that, it's anybody's guess of 5S/5C ratio, but if the surveys are right, then the breakdown is about:

  • 64% 5S = 2.2 million
  • 27% 5C = 900K
  • 09% 4S = 315K
Click to expand...

Not really, because the new iPhones were only available for a week of the quarter. The iPhone 5 and 4 were also available for the majority of the quarter.
 
TheRealTVGuy said:
Here's a question for you Verizon guys...

I'm thinking of making the jump from an iPhone 4 on AT&T to a 5s (or next year a 6) on Verizon's LTE network. When you're on LTE, can you do simultaneous phone & data? I use that all the time.

What happens if you lose your LTE signal? Does this happen often?

Any help is appreciated.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the Verizon iPhone doesn't support simultaneous voice and LTE the way some of their other LTE phones do. Those other phones have separate chips for voice and LTE. The iPhone uses a single chip. The downside is that voice runs on 3G on Verizon, and CDMA 3G doesn't natively support simultaneous voice and data. 3G is much slower on Verizon than AT&T (since CDMA doesn't have the equivalent of "4G" HSPA+).
 
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