07/29/2008, 10:50am, EDT
Tuesday, July 29thRogers: iPhone "slammed brakes" on rivals
Sales of other phones on Rogers Wireless' network virtually ground to a halt the day of the iPhone 3G announcement in late April, company president Nadir Mohammed said today during a call discussing the company's latest quarterly results. Although the cellular business helped drive Rogers' year-over-year quarterly revenue increase of 11 percent to $2.8 billion without the iPhone on sale, the company executive notes that demand for other devices "slammed on the brakes" the same day as Rogers announced it would launch the Apple device during the summer.
Demand for devices remained cool roughly up until the launch of the iPhone itself, according to the report. Nokia and Rogers significantly halved the N95 8GB's price to $200 on contract less than a week after the iPhone 3G release in a bid to stimulate sales versus the iPhone, which has most of the same hardware features at the same price.
Mohammed also reveals that Rogers was completely taken by surprise with the opportunity to launch the device, regardless of whether it used Apple's original model of sharing monthly revenue or the new device subsidy approach. "We didn't anticipate that we would launch that device under any model this year," he says.
The company nonetheless believes Apple's current approach is "highly, highly attractive" to Rogers. Although the up-front discount on the device is the largest the company has ever had, the higher average revenue per user is expected to more than offset the initial price of the phone as nearly all customers are likely to sign up for a data plan and potentially extra features. Mohammed declines to specifically identify its user behavior, however, and notes that most phones of the class have a "honeymoon period" of between 90 to 120 days where service usage is extremely heavy.
Rogers has committed to buying at least $150 million in iPhones and will spend more as necessary.
The Canadian provider further adds that non-disclosure agreements prevent it from discussing the ratio of customers upgrading versus new additions, but says that it would be "premature" to provide any kind of definite answer. AT&T in the US has said that a significant minority of new iPhone 3G subscribers are conversions from competing networks.
Filed under: iPhone
Other story tags: Nokia, iPhone 3G, Rogers
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Significant minority?
What the hell is a significant minority? Do they mean to say that almost nobody switched from another provider?
Who?
Who writes this crap?
so
does this mean no one is buying any phone but the iphone, or just no one was buying anything but an iphone on release day?
And why would anyone buy any phone but an iphone that day? First, Rogers, from all reports, sucks as a provider, so it isn't like people would line up for them. And, more importantly, you see a phone store with a bunch of people in it, you know you're not going to be served anytime soon, so you just don't bother entering in the first place.
Bunch of BS
I live right in the heart of downtown Toronto, ON.
I mean RIGHT downtown... blocks from Eaton Centre.
There are 2 large size Rogers retail outlets and 3
small Rogers franchise cellular outlets within 3
blocks radius of me and I've been to every store
to see and "experience" the sales cycle. As of this
past Sat. NO one in the larger stores asked if I
wanted assistance or info on the iPhone I looked at.
And in all stores, I approached a rep and specifically
asked how much they had left in stock and how
many have they actually sold. "Lots" was the common
response, but when pushed to compare to their
regular line-up of phones, well thats a dif. story...
NOT one store was sold out and only one store said
they sold 18 units, but the rest did NOT sell more
than 12 units in the past two weeks... and this in the
busiest areas of Toronto and the whole country !
So, you're full of crap Rogers. You sold more
Blackberry's from those stores than iPhones. I asked.
If you had to guarantee a $150 million iPhone contract
then you've got a long way to go to catch up.
Enough with the high prices, poor service and lies !!
We're all fed up with your PR BS.
Re: bunch of BS
Not necessarily BS. Just because they weren't selling every one of their iPhones doesn't mean people bought others. Let's be fair. Rogers can easily not sell all types of phones, not just iphones.
Significant minority?
Significant minority: Less than half but enough to be worthy of attention.