Zagat Does Wireless, Too
Zagat, a name often associated with restaurant reviews, is now surveying consumers about their wireless service providers. In a survey of 2,319 wireless consumers who rated AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless on key performance aspects, the overall top winner was Verizon Wireless.
None of the carriers in the survey, however, can claim perfection. According to Zagat’s survey, Verizon Wireless scored a 22 across five categories on a 30-point scale.
T-Mobile’s overall score was 19, and AT&T and Sprint tied with 18. Ratings were rounded to the nearest whole number, with 16-19 meaning good to very good; 20-25 very good to excellent; and 26-30 extraordinary to perfection.
Verizon’s strong suits were Reliability (26) and Coverage (26) with the other three main carriers falling behind with ratings between 20 and 17. Customer Service scores were much closer: Verizon won with a 19, a narrow margin over T-Mobile (19), AT&T (16) and Sprint (15). Ratings are in order to a ten-thousandth of a point and then rounded to the nearest whole number.
AT&T took the top spot in the Products category with a 24, followed in order by Verizon (19), T-Mobile (19) and Sprint (18). As for Value, T-Mobile scored a 20, Sprint 19, Verizon 18 and AT&T 15.
When asked if they would recommend their wireless carrier to friends and family members, 92 percent of Verizon customer said “yes,” followed by 79 percent of Sprint customers, 79 percent of T-Mobile customers and 69 percent of AT&T customers.
Flurry estimates that Google sold just 20,000 Nexus One devices during its first week on the market, lagging behind the myTouch 3G and the Motorola Droid. Flurry monitors usage of more than 10,000 developers’ applications on iPhone and Android platforms. In total, Flurry says it tracks applications on about four out of every five iPhone and Android handsets in the market, generating more than 25 million end user sessions per day. To estimate first week sales totals for the Nexus One, myTouch 3G, Droid and iPhone 3GS, Flurry detected new handsets within its system and then made adjustments to account for varying levels of Flurry application penetration by handset.
App Stores to Surpass 21.6 Billion Downloads by 2013
Gartner forecasts worldwide downloads in mobile application stores to surpass 21.6 billion by 2013. Free downloads will account for 82 percent of all downloads in 2010 and will account for 87 percent of downloads in 2013. Games remain the No. 1 application.
Worldwide mobile application stores’ download revenue exceeded $4.2 billion in 2009 and will grow to $29.5 billion by the end of 2013, according to Gartner. The revenue forecast includes end-user spending on paidfor applications and advertising-sponsored free applications. Advertising-sponsored mobile applications will generate almost 25 percent of mobile application store revenue by 2013.
Go Figure
• 70%: Percentage of smartphone owners who used at least one mobile banking and/or payment service in the prior three months, according to a Data Innovations study.
• The costs of building the Nexus One, Motorola Droid and the Apple iPhone are pretty close. The teardown firm iSuppli puts the bill of materials and manufacturing cost of the Nexus One at $174.15, while the Droid’s costs are estimated at $179.11 and the iPhone 3GS 16 Gbyte version is $178.96. Cost estimates do not include software and royalties.
• In 2009, 802.11n WLAN access point shipments increased by nearly 44 percent over the previous year, according to ABI Research. The firm estimates that enterprise 802.11n access point shipments reached half a million by the end of last year. Cisco’s market share is estimated at 63 percent, with Aruba’s at 25 percent.