The iPhone has been the flagship handset of AT&T since they started selling it in 2007. Their exclusive U.S. contract to carry the Apple smartphone meant that they poured all their energy into marketing and selling it. But their exclusivity contract is due to end in January with Verizon jumping into the iPhone market, and so the US telecoms giant has had to have a smartphone reshuffle.
The company's lineup this year will have ballooned by about 10 smartphones ahead of the holiday season to with new arrivals Microsoft and Google.
And AT&T is now the only U.S. carrier to offer smartphones with every operating system available on the market, including Symbian, Palm and BlackBerry. Its website currently lists about 16 different smartphone models.
Analysts seem to be convinced by their survival strategy "AT&T clearly has tried to diversify themselves away from the iPhone, and that's probably the right strategy since they've relied so heavily on the iPhone these past few years," said Chris King, an Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst in Baltimore.
Plus, yesterday, AT&T themselves reported the effort is showing early success, saying more than half of new customers chose a device other than the iPhone last quarter (an increase of 36 percent compared with a year earlier.)
Though the iPhone still currently remains the core of the company (with 1.25 million new iPhone customers in the third quarter) AT&Ts move away from the iPhone reflects the ever moving market which is as competitive as ever.
With so much choice out there, things can be a little overwhelming, but at the end of the day it's the consumers who will benefit from this smartphone war.
Source: Bloomsberg