It was the news that dominated headlines in the cellular world this weekend, and the news that sent Sprint investors into a panic. Of course, I am talking about the $39 billion dollar purchase of T-Mobile USA by AT&T, motivated primarily by the extra 46.5 million Americans that AT&T could serve their 4G network to.
It doesn’t hurt, of course, that the new AT&T-Mobile will have over 5 times the Android users AT&T alone had.
A major concern of Apple leaving AT&T and leaving them well behind in the Android market took a major step forward this year with the release of the CDMA iPhone, whose progress into the iPhone market currently sits at 10.3% according to our tracker. Thanks to this purchase, though, AT&T is now able to counter this loss by absorbing all of T-Mobile USA, and the rather large Android market share they will provide. To determine how much, Chitika Insights took a look at the phones that comprised 98% of the US Android market, and traced them back to their individual providers:
| Verizon | 51.418% |
| Sprint | 25.345% |
| AT&T/T-Mobile | 20.344% |
| MetroPCS | 1.295% |
| US Cellular | 0.894% |
| Virgin | 0.703% |
While T-Mobile and AT&T’s combined firepower will still fall short of Sprint’s 25.345% market share, the deal between the two will increase AT&T’s share of the market over 5x to 20.344%, a number that looks to also be gaining momentum with the release of phones like HTC Inspire and Motorola Atrix.
A few months ago, people were wondering if the CDMA iPhone could put AT&T into massive peril. Now, as bizarre as this question would have been to ask just one week ago, will people soon ask if AT&T can challenge the majority share of Verizon in the Android market?
21 comments