During the past few weeks, we asked 14 AT&T locations across the country to gauge trends in the sales of cell phones. We asked the following questions.

1. What is the best selling phone model right now?

2. What is the best device to get for e-mail?

3. What is the best music device?

4. Has there been an increase in the number of people opening new accounts or buying the iPhone in the past 3 weeks?

• The Apple iPhone was seen as the best selling phone with 64% of the respondents reporting so. The new Apple iPhone was reported as the best by 21% of the respondents. This suggests the great amount of popularity the iPhone has.

• The Apple iPhone was also seen as the best device to receive email as reported by 39% of the locations. The Blackberry was close behind with 32% of the respondents reporting that it was better than the iPhone. The Blackberry is a phone for business so this is a little surprising that the iPhone is considered to be better in terms of receiving emails.

• 86% of the respondents reported that the iPhone is a better phone for music than the other phones. Only 2 respondents reported something different. One said the Sony phone was better and the other stated the AT&T Quickfire was the best.

• An increase in the number of people opening new accounts or buying the iPhone in the past three weeks was seen by 79% of the respondents. 14% AT&T locations saw no growth.

Conclusion of Channel Check: In these AT&T locations, the Apple iPhone is very popular. The top two selling phones in these stores are both iPhone’s, with the new one model still behind the older one. Even when the survey turned to the email question, the business phone, the Blackberry, was shown to be slightly behind the iPhone. Of course, in the music question, nearly all the respondents said the versatile iPhone was best. The results suggest that there is an increase in the number of new accounts or purchases of the iPhone. The most popular phone in the market looks to be gaining even more sales in the recent times. All in all the iPhone looks to continue its strong trend of success and looks to be having more sales with AT&T also opening more accounts.

For access to the underlying survey or for more information, please contact Jason Katz at 415.867.0959 or jason@thechannelcheckers.com

]]> http://www.thechannelcheckers.com/2009/07/iphone-continues-to-dominate-at-att-wireless/feed/ http://www.thechannelcheckers.com/2009/05/iphone-remains-dominant-at-att/ http://www.thechannelcheckers.com/2009/05/iphone-remains-dominant-at-att/#comments Fri, 29 May 2009 22:01:11 +0000 Casey http://www.thechannelcheckers.com/2009/05/iphone-remains-dominant-at-att/ Over the past week, we surveyed various cell phone providers to gauge trends in the sales of Apple iPhones. We asked the following questions:

1. What is the best selling phone model right now?

2. What is the best device to get for e-mail?

3. What is the best music device?

4. Has there been an increase in the number of people opening new accounts or buying the iPhone in the past 3 weeks?

• Apple iPhone was seen as the best selling phone model over the past week by 73% of respondents. 7% viewed Blackberry as the top selling phone model. The responses suggest that people prefer the iPhone over other phone models.

• 53% of respondents viewed Blackberry as the best device to get for e-mail, while 33% viewed the Apple iPhone as the second best device for email. The Blackberry is known to be a phone for business consumers so it’s not surprising that they dominated the response to this question.

• Apple iPhone was seen as the top best music device by 63% of respondents, 7% saw the Sony Ericsson as the best music device and another 3% saw the Blackberry as the top selling music device for phones.

• 53% of respondent said that there hasn’t been an increase in the number of people opening new accounts or buying the iPhone in the past 3 weeks, while 47% of respondents said that there has been an increase.

Conclusion of Channel Check: The Apple iPhone is still considered one of the top selling phones out there since its release in 2008. It was viewed as the top device for music by a majority of respondents as opposed to other phone devices. However when it came down to the best device for emails the Blackberry dominated the response to the question. The results also suggested that there hasn’t been much of an increase of number of people opening new accounts or buying the iPhone in the past 3 weeks. The iPhone is one of the most popular phones in the market but the demand for it over the past week has been constant.

For access to the underlying survey or for more information, please contact Jason Katz at 415.867.0959 or jason@thechannelcheckers.com

1. Are you discounting any iPod’s?

2. What is the best selling iPod model?

3. Have you sold more iPod’s in the past month than in the previous month?

4. Are you planning on discounting computers soon?

• 87% of respondents said they were not discounting iPod’s currently.

• 63% of respondents said that the iPod Touch was the best selling iPod model. 23% said that the new iPod Shuffle was the best selling model.

• 57% of respondents said they had sold more iPod’s in this past month than in the previous month.

• 63% of respondents reported not discounting computers or any kind. 37% said they were discounting computers.

Conclusion of Channel Check: Apple stores appear to be holding the line on pricing. This trend has been consistent throughout 2009. We believe that the pricing discipline could positively impact Apple’s performance. Business also appears to be trending upwards in April. In our related survey on AT&T stores (www.thechannelcheckers.com/blogs/) sales of the iPhone continue to look strong with positive trends in new iPhone account openings in addition to simple hardware unit sales.

For access to the underlying survey or for more information, please contact Jason Katz at 415.867.0959 or jason@thechannelcheckers.com

Over the past week, The Channel Checkers surveyed 15 Apple stores to track sales of iPod and Macs along with business trends at Apple stores in the U.S. We asked if the stores were discounting iPods in February and 73% said they were not while 27% said they were discounting some models specifically iPod Nano’s. The top selling computer was said to be the Mac Book Pro according to 73% of respondents.  66% of respondents told us they had sold fewer computers in the past month while the other third thought sales of computers were rising in February versus January. Despite the appearance of a slowdown in Apple computer sales, only 13% of respondents said they were discounting Mac’s while 87% said they were not, suggesting demand is strong enough to maintain full pricing.

We are conducting a follow up report tracking consumers purchasing trends for Apple products. For access to the underlying survey or for more information, please contact Jason Katz at 415.867.0959 or jason@thechannelcheckers.com

The results of our survey were not entirely surprising but did highlight some interesting trends. The “best” phone outside of AT&T stores (AT&T results discussed in detail below) the best selling phone remained the Motorola RAZR (all variants) followed closely by Nokia’s N-Series line with the N-95 and N-73 primarily cited.  Motorola RAZR’s were seen as the best phone by 17% of our survey respondents while the Nokia N-series was favored by 12%.

The best smartphone / PDA device was clearly Research In Motion’s (RIM) Blackberry line.  Blackberry’s were cited as the best smartphone device by 42% of all respondents, including many AT&T store representatives.  Aside from the iPhone the Palm Treo line and the Nokia N-series, the N-95 in particular, were mentioned as best devices for this category was well.  Palm and Nokia were viewed as the top smartphone device by 4% of respondents each.   It appears that Blackberry devices maintain their popularity in spite of the entrance of the iPhone during the summer months while Nokia is a little weaker in this category than they were in our June survey.

The top music phone outside the AT&T network remains the Sony-Ericsson Walkman series which was rated number one by 17% of respondents followed by LG’s Chocolate phones which were viewed as best by 6% of respondents.  In non-U.S. markets the Sony-Ericsson series dominated this survey category.

At AT&T the answer to the “best” phone questions was  the iPhone from Apple.  This was also the case at AT&T stores to the question of which phone was the best for music. On the topic of best smartphone/PDA device the AT&T store reps were mixed. While some did recommend the iPhone again as the best device in this category models from Research In Motion’s Blackberry line were also mentioned frequently.

We will be running a new survey on these categories in a few weeks and hope to highlight changes or new trends in the cell phone space as 2007 moves into 2008.

We called 52 AT&T Wireless stores and asked three simple questions.

1. Do you have iPhones in stock?
2. How Many?
3. Is the iPhone your best selling phone right now?

The responses to the first question was “yes” iPhones were in stock according to 43 of the 52 (roughly 82%) store representatives we talked to. Nine stores claimed to be sold out of the iPhone. The average number of iPhones in stock was 4.5. Only 4 stores had as many as 9 iPhones in stock and most had 3-6 in stock at any one time.

The answers to our third question were more interesting as this time 33 out of 52 store representatives (roughly 63%) said the iPhone was the best selling phone. 19 representatives said it was not the best selling phone at AT&T. One rep cited the Samsung BlackJack SGH-i607 as a better seller than the iPhone (we believe the Blackjack has been on sale with heavy subsidies since before the iPhone was launched) and another said it depended more on what a person needed the phone for. One rep did tell us that his store sold out in 1-2 days of delivery of iPhones at his store, suggesting that it was obviously the best seller there.

We were somewhat surprised by the high availability of the iPhone but more surprised that the response to our question about it being the best selling device. Our data suggests the iPhone is clearly selling well and being moved through retail but it does not seem to be as strong a consumer device as recent consumer tech smashes like the Motorola RAZR and the Nintendo Wii or even the original iPod.

1. Is the retail outlet corporate owned or a franchise location?

2. Can the iPhone be pre-ordered?

3. Is there a waiting list?

We viewed the question on pre-ordering as one that implied the ability to better guarantee an iPhone when released. As reported widely last week, Apple released television ads highlighting that June 29th would be the launch date for the phone.

The results appear to confirm our previous study that demand for the iPhone is strong.

For the follow-up study, we called 100 AT&T Wireless stores - 57 were corporate owned and 43 were franchisee owned. 37% of the stores reported pre-order lists, while 55% of the surveyed stores reported waiting lists. Overall, there was very little difference between the corporate-owned and the franchised stores. The parity between the rates of pre-order lists suggests that corporate missives from AT&T are not altering behavior of the employees at the retail level. We continue to believe that employees are creating pre-order and waiting lists to lock-in iPhone customers and as a result, to lock-in sales commissions for themselves. The violation of corporate policy at corporate owned stores further validates the powerful demand building for the iPhone product in our opinion.

As we understand it, the official AT&T policy is no waiting lists for any phones, yet we have found significant waiting lists at many of the 136 AT&T stores we’ve called. We believe that the waiting lists, in violation of corporate policy, provide a picture into demand for the iPhone. We believe our survey results indicate that demand will be significant and that while great success is already expected for the iPhone, the actual demand may still exceed these expectations.

We are about half way done with our 100 store sample survey. We understand that official policy says no waiting lists. We believe the waiting lists are in existence and happening because of the large number of eager buyers wanting to get a hold of the iPhone when it launches. We will also state that we do not know when the phone will launch but most AT&T Wireless store reps and most of the writing in the news suggests the phone will ship some time in June 2007.

We will post the survey when we complete it. We can tell you the early results show a significant number of stores still telling us that they do have waiting lists for the phones. Not all, but many. We will post on the full suvey when it is completed.

On the first question, the expected arrival date for the iPhone at Cingular stores ranged from June 15th to July generally. Some respondents claimed August and “winter 2007″ as the arrival date for the phone. Apple has cited June 15, but rumors have swirled that this date may be pushed back a bit (we agree and will get to this topic in a bit).

Our second question about wait lists resulted in 64% of stores reporting a waiting list (We called 36 stores for this survey). The remaining 36% said sales were on a “first come first serve” basis. It was apparent to us that stores reps were keeping their own waiting lists as most are compensated on commission basis it makes sense to us that waiting lists would proliferate as the launch date closes in. So it appears that 64% of Cingular reps are industrious capitalists.

The average number of names on each waiting list was 25 people (there are roughly 10,000 Cingular Wireless outlets). We did have one outlier in New York City, which we excluded from our average, that had 1,979 people on its waiting list. Another store said “we cannot give out that figure but the waiting list is running into the thousands”, another store reported that the number of calls for the phone was “indeterminable” as the numbers were massive.

Our take on our quick survey is that demand for the iPhone is probably going to surprise even Apple fanatics in the early days. We expect sell-outs and complaints about lack of availability of the phone. On this point, we have stumbled across some info that leads us to beleive that HonHai is having trouble manufacturing to schedule and is running behind due to some part delays. It appears that the initial 12 million unit run rate will not be available by June 15. Get your iPhone if you can…

The most interesting finding for us was that at Best Buy some respondents were pushing the Insignia MP3 player product line. We had not heard of this brand but discovered that Insignia is the Best Buy white label brand (see story at http://www.gadgetell.com/2006/12/best-buys-insignia-mp3-players/). It occurs to has this has the potential to create a little channel conflict between Best Buy and Apple at some point, but for now the Insignia does not seem to be taking a lot of market share.

Apple TV is now in stores as we write this. It was not available generally when we conducted our survey. The takeway from our survey on Apple TV was that most respondents felt it would be a good product but would serve a niche Apple-centric market.

iPhone was the most interesting survey for us even as the launch date is debated at other web sites and by commentators. We found two key indicators of good demand for the iPhone in our survey. First, Cingular stores are taking names for a waiting list for these phones. In our experience this rarely happens in the cell phone industry. Second, Cingular store representatives are encouraging us to wait for the iPhone and forego buying a new phone today. Again, this is almost unheard of, especially when we consider that most cell phone salespeople are compensated for hitting daily sales quotas - driving them to try and sell phones today, not threee months from now. Apple has publicly targeted 10M iPhone units as its early sales goal. We understand that Apple is having 12M built. We believe that the iPhone will sell out and that unit sales will be over the 12M initial production run that Apple has ordered. We believe that Hon Hai (AKA Foxconn) is the manufacturere for iPhone product.