Q4 and End of Year Assessment of the “Top 4 Mobile Carriers”

Q4 and End of Year Assessment of the “Top 4 Mobile Carriers”
Compass Intelligence just completed the final assessment of Q4 and the end of the year numbers/metrics with the major wireless carriers. We do this each quarter to understand the subscriber and share changes, as well as evaluate the key trends taking place in the wireless industry for both consumer and B2B.  We have been tracking the quarterly metrics since 2007. Some metrics are our own internal modeling and estimates as the market does not report in all categories.  Compass Intelligence also does this for the entire IoT/M2M market as well. A snapshot of Q4 2016 is below.
Compass Intelligence compared last quarter’s results to this quarter to show which metrics showed improvement over others (denoted by + or -).

Source: Compass Intelligence, Carrier Earnings Reports
Below are additional thoughts and insights based on the quarter and annual performance:

• OVERALL NOTES:
  • The market ended the quarter with about 5.5M new connections QoQ (includes IoT and mobile subscribers), but added 23.6M connections for the entire 2015 year growing at 6.1%
  • Smartphone growth is continuing to slow overall, but from Q3 to Q4, an estimated 5M postpaid smartphones were added for the quarter or 12.9M for the 2015 year (7.1% annual growth)
  • Tablet activations show growth for the quarter at 9.6% or 2.6M additions, 7.8M added for the year with overall growth at 28.7%
  • Verizon and AT&T continue to push their customers towards installment plans and are showing growth in terms of their overall base on EIP plans (AT&T leading with 46% of base)
  • Sprint just halted 2 yr contract for a brief period, but reinstated over the last week, mentioning customers drove their decision.
• REVENUE: All carriers reported lower service revenue except for T-Mobile.
  • T-Mobile was the only carrier to experience revenue growth from Q3 to Q4
  • For 2015, overall revenues remained very flat with an overall 0.2% decline from year ending 2014
• CHURN: Verizon experienced the lowest churn for the quarter with 1.14% churn for the Q4 quarter, while Sprint continues to post the highest churn rates despite improving their metrics overall for the quarter
• POSTPAID ADDS:
  • All 4 carriers ended the quarter with positive postpaid net adds, adding 4.3M retail subscribers for the 2015 year or 1.5% growth
  • While last quarter T-Mobile dominated with PP adds, this quarter Verizon came out on top posting 1.5M adds for the quarter.
  • For the year, T-Mobile came out on top with 5.8 PP adds for the year, followed by Verizon with 3.9 adds for the year
• CONNECTIONS:
  • Total industry connections: 401M. Total industry subscriber base: 343M (Includes ALL MNOs and MVNOs)
  • Total smartphone subscribers=240M (about 70% of total subs carry smartphones)
  • Postpaid (PP) smartphones for big four reached 181M

As shown above, overall the industry added an estimated 24M connections in 2015, which represents a 6.1% change from 2014. AT&T lead overall connection adds for the year, adding over 8M connections in 2015 followed by T-Mobile with 6M+ added connections in 2015. AT&T’s growth was primarily driven by IoT connections, specific to growth in the connected car deals it closed in 2015. In terms of retail subscribers, the industry growth for the year reached 3.9% adding 11.6M subscribers. For retail subscribers, T-Mobile was the strongest performer adding 5.8M retail subscribers in 2015, followed by Verizon with 3.9M retail subscriber additions in 2015.

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