Every single member on this forum could switch, and Cingular wouldn't notice they're there, and the other provider wouldn't notice they're gone.
And Cingular isn't going to get a bunch of new customers. Well, it depends on what you define a bunch as. Maybe to us, a million is a lot, but when Cingular has nearly 60 million customers, the million isn't a lot. It's not even a drop in the bucket....and I doubt Cingular will even get a million new customers.
First, any decent company would notice a 1.7% uptick in their customer volume. Not saying Cingular is a decent company, but tone down the hyperbole. They'd notice 1 million new customers, and Verizon would notice the loss.
That having been said, I really doubt there will be 1 million new Cingular customers as well.
My analysis is that there are "hard" and "soft" reasons someone is with their current cellular provider.
HARD:
* Service reliability (in the area where they live, the area where they work, and the area in between at minimum).
* Feature availability (3G networks if needed, bluetooth file transfers if needed, etc)
* [Time-limited] Lock-in from contract
SEMI-SOFT:
* Price of service plans
* Available phone features
* [-] Inability to get "new customer" discount when contract ends
SOFT:
* Previous experiences with companies
* [-] Cool new phones exclusive to other providers
Even the coolest new phone has a hard time going against the "hard" reasons above. While some areas are blessed with decent coverage from multiple cellular companies, I've never lived in one. Everywhere I've lived has had a "good coverage" provider and a slew of "you won't be able to make a call half of the time" providers. There's no sense getting a cool phone if you can't make a call on it. Likewise, if you can't afford to use the cool features on your phone then they're as good as not there; plan pricing will easily trump features when those features use the network (as cell providers wish all cool features did).
My prediction is that Cingular will see an uptick in new subscribers when the iPhone comes out, but not long-term significant. How significant in the short term depends on how well it prices plans to use the iPhone; long-term gains will require network improvements on both the speed and coverage sides. That having been said, the history of the cell provider industry in the past ten years is that such exclusives provide a nice boost, and without any exclusives the provider loses market share in the long term.
Ever heard of the term MVNO?. Look it up in google.
BTW, it means mobile virtual network operator
Yeah. You buy coverage from the established companies and market it to customers. While it is a possibility, MVNOs will always (assuming no massive regulation of the industry) lose to the primary networks. While Apple could make itself another "me too" in the industry going that route, they couldn't shape the industry because they would always be beholden to the actual infrastructure owners.
IMHO, not a likely scenario for Apple to pursue. It is possible, but not likely. And becoming an MVNO would
not, by any stretch of the imagination, have the effect on Cingular the original poster claimed (stealing all of Cingular's customers because they have the call list and can annoy said customers with dinner-time calls until they relent and bow down to their new cell phone overlords).
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