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In late September and early October, we surveyed 19 Verizon wireless locations and asked about the best selling devices for key applications (like music and e-mail). The survey asked the following questions.

 

 

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

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

3. What is the best device to get for music?

4. Has there been an increase in the number of people buying new phones or upgrading their accounts in the past month?

 

 

• 53% of respondents said that a Blackberry device was the best selling device at their location. 16% cited an LG model while another 16% cited a Samsung model. HTC and Motorola phones were cited as well.

• 68% respondents cited Blackberry models when asked which device was the best for e-mail. LG again scored a number two spot with 16% of respondents.

• LG was the top brand recommended for music with over 35% of respondents recommending an LG model as tops of music. Samsung was second with over 25% of respondents citing it as a the best model/brand for music.

• 79% of respondents reported that they are seeing increased new account openings or upgrades from customers in the past month. 21% of respondents say they are not seeing an increase in these categories.

Conclusion of Channel Check: New accounts and upgrades of existing plans appear to be picking up at Verizon stores in September and October. Research In Motion’s Balckberry line of mobile devices appears to be the best selling at Verizon. Samsung and LG look strong in the music focused segments and also run distant number 2 and 3 respectively in the e-mail and best selling categories. Verizon looks focused on hardware ASP’s as all three of these top vendors offer a wide range of mid-priced to lower priced devices to Verizon’s customer base.

 

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

 

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

Over the past few weeks we have surveyed Sprint stores around the US to gauge trends in performance. We asked the following questions:

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

2. What is the best device to get for email?

3. What is the best music device?

4. Has there been a increase in people upgrading their phones or opening new accounts in the past few months?

 54% of respondents replied the Palm Pre as the best selling phone right now. 21% of respondents replied the Blackberry as the best selling phone right now. 8% of respondents replied the SCP 2700 Sanyo as the best selling phone right now.

 42% of respondents replied the Palm Pre as the best selling phone for music. 29% of respondents replied the Blackberry as the best selling phone for music. 17% of respondents replied the Samsung as the best selling phone for music.

 17% of respondents replied the Palm Pre as the best selling phone for email. 21% of respondents replied the Blackberry as the best selling phone for email. 38% of respondents replied the Samsung as the best selling phone for email

 92% of respondents replied they have seen an increase in people upgrading there phones or opening new accounts over the past few months. 8% of respondents replied they have not seen an increase in people upgrading there phones or opening new accounts over the past few months.

Conclusion of the Channel Checkers: For Sprint, business appears to be doing well. The new hot phone for Sprint is the Palm Pre, which exclusively contracts with Sprint only. The best phone for music is also said to be the Palm Pre according to respondents. The best phone for email is a Samsung device. There has been a huge increase in upgrading phones or new plans for Sprint. With the introduction of the Palm Pre, Sprint should be able to capitalize of it.

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

Over the past week, we surveyed Verizon retail locations to gauge trends in the casual dining business. We asked the following questions:

1. What is the best selling overall device?

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

3. What is the best selling music device?

4. Has there been an increase in the number of people opening accounts (or upgrading phones, a proxy for extending a subscription)?

• 17% of respondents said that the Blackberry Storm was the best selling overall device. 13% said the Blackberry Pearl was the best selling.

• 33% of respondents stated that the Blackberry Storm was the top device for e-mail. 27% of respondents cited various other Blackberry models. 10% cited the Verizon branded SMT5800.

• The Blackberry as a product group was seen as best for music by 27% of respondents. 17% cited the Samsung Juke, and 10% cited the LG Chocolate.

• 63% of respondents stated that more people were opening new accounts or upgrading this month versus last month. 37% said they were not.

Conclusion of Channel Check: Verizon stores representatives appear to be pushing Blackberry products to a wide range of consumers recommending Blackberry devices as the best for e-mail, music and best overall. 63% of respondents seeing increased new account activity in the latest month is a strong positive for Verizon and suggests that Blackberry devices and new subscription additions point to positive reports from the company.

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, we surveyed AT&T Stores to gauge trends in sales cell phones and new account sign ups. We asked the following questions:

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

2. Has there been an increase in the number of people opening accounts?

3. What is the best overall selling phone?

4. What is the best selling music device?

 

• 53% of respondents said that the Apple iPhone was the top device for e-mail. The Blackberry Bold was seen as the best device by 27% of respondents.

• 53% of respondents state that the number of new accounts opened at their location has increased in the past month.

• The Apple iPhone was seen as the best selling overall device by 67% of respondents.

• The Apple iPhone was seen as the best music device by 53% of respondents. 20% cited the Sony-Ericsson W350.

Conclusion of Channel Check: The Apple iPhone appears to maintaining its strength as the leader in every category we survey – best overall, best for e-mail and best for music. New account openings appear to be moving up a bit. We believe that AT&T Wireless is doing well with the strong allure of the Apple iPhone drawing in new users.

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

We recently surveyed 26 Alltel stores across the US. 35% cited the LG Scoop as the best-selling phone model, up from 12% in March, while 27% cited the MOTORAZR. 12% mentioned the Blackberry Pearl. Various Blackberry models were cited by 58% as the best device for e-mail, down slightly from 67% in March. 24% stated the Motorokr Z6M is the best music device, followed by the Motoroloa RAZR, the LG Glimmer and the LG AX565, each mentioned by 15%.

This data bodes well for Research In Motion as Alltel’s customer base appears to prefer the Blackberries for e-mail and this will help fight off the LG and Palm efforts within Verizon to be recommended over the Blackberry.  Covnersely, for the general phone population LG scoop is attractive. LG appears to be a strong fixture at Alltel, which will help with integration as Verizon also promotes LG devices heavily.

40 stores were consulted across the nation including Verizon, AT&T wireless, Radio Shack and Alltel. Our researchers asked whether applications could be downloaded into their cell phones and all 40 or 100% of those polled responded yes. We asked which were the best applications available and the following applications were cited as best: ESPN MVP, Maps (including Google Maps, Sprint Navigation and VZ Navigation), music, ring tones, Java and Windows Mobile. We asked our researchers what percentage of people download these applications and 18 respondents or 45% of those polled said less than 50%. 22 respondents or 55% of those interviewed said higher than 50%. The average for this question was 24%, our survey found. Interestingly, we asked whether downloads were increasing, decreasing or were about the same as this time last year. Five respondents or 13% said the use of applications was about the same as a year ago, while 35 respondents or 87% said application downloads were definitely increasing.

Publicly traded until it was taken private last year, Alltel was the subject of our most recent survey. We polled Alltel stores across the country and found that LG phones are the bestsellers. Thirty-seven percent of respondents named as bestsellers LG models including the AX8600, AX 145, Rumor and Scoop. Motorola was the next most frequently named manufacturer, with 30% of those surveyed calling it their best seller. The most frequently named model was the RAZR. The top email device for Alltel stores was the Blackberry Pearl, named by 26% of respondents. Other Blackberry models brought that manufacturer’s total to 67% - making it by far the bestselling brand. Motorola won the prize for bestselling music device, with 44% of respondents naming various Motorola models. Twenty-two percent of those surveyed named the MOTOROKRtm Z6m, and 15% named the MOTORAZR2 V9m.

In our survey over the first two weeks of February of broad line electronics retailers we found that the Apple iPod continues to lead the market for MP3 players. The Apple iPod was seen as the “best” MP3 player by 75% of our respondents (up from 71% in our December survey) while Microsoft Zune player was seen as “best” by the remaining 25% (up from 11% in our December survey). Interestingly Creative Zen, Sandisk and other vendors were shut out in this category. We asked about the cheapest MP3 players in the market as well in our survey and found the Best Buy brand Insignia player cited as the “cheapest” by 25% of our respondents (note that roughly 50% of our survey responses were from Best Buy stores) and 21% cited the Sandisk Sansa line of MP3 players. Brands such as Nextar, Creative, Isonic and iLo were also mentioned as being the “cheapest”. We also asked respondents to tell us if they viewed a stand alone MP3 player or a combination music phone to be the better device. 50% of respondents stated that a music phone is the better device while 39% said that a stand alone MP3 player was better. This is a shift from our December survey where more respondents preferred the MP3 players to a music phone by a margin of 49% to 42%. Storage capacity and sound quality were the primary elements cited by MP3 player supporters while convenience and the 2:1 benefits of the music phone were mentioned by those preferring the music phones.

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