Sprint sold a total of 1.8 million iPhones during Q4 2011, with 40 percent of those going to new customers. Admittedly, 1.8 million is only about a quarter of the 7.6 million iPhones AT&T sold during the same period, and less than half the 4.2 million moved by Verizon, but considering Sprint’s 55 million customers ranks as the the third largest U.S. wireless carrier, and this is the first official quarter that Sprint had the iPhone to sell, it still indicates a fairly solid adoption by their subscribe base.

“Our strong fourth quarter performance illustrates the power of matching iconic devices like the iPhone with our simple, unlimited plans and industry-leading customer experience,” said Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO. “During the past year, Sprint added more than 5 million net new customers and grew wireless service revenue by more than 5 percent, including 17 percent for the Sprint platform. This momentum gives us confidence as we execute our Network Vision upgrade and 4G LTE roll-out.”

Although the company recorded a $1.3 billion net loss for the quarter, they’re focusing on added subscriber value and overall unit sales this time around. And with those added smartphone sales, new customers are subsequently coming in by the masses according to their earnings report — mostly thanks to the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, and their position as the last U.S. carrier to offer unlimited data contracts.

It looks like that $20 billion bet Sprint made with Apple is slowly starting to pay off.

Source: Sprint

Not only did more smartphones sell this quarter than ever before, but Apple was responsible for all three of top sellers — iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, and iPhone 3GS

IDC has released a new report showing overall smartphone shipments grew a staggering 54.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 thanks to overwhelming demand for the iPhone 4S. Rising popularity has helped push the iPhone 4S to become the number one selling smartphone in the world. Not only did Apple absolutely own the top selling spot, but they owned the top 3 spots as well. That’s right, second only to the iPhone 4S in popularity was the iPhone 4, followed up by the iPhone 3GS according to NPD Group.

Apple climbed back into the market leadership position with the launch of its iPhone 4S worldwide, and in the process it reached a new shipment volume record for itself and for the entire industry for a single quarter. Although the iPhone 4S disappointed some detractors by lacking 4G LTE connectivity or a different size screen, demand was high for the device. In addition, the combination of holiday seasonality, the delay in product launch from 3Q to 4Q, and the addition of multiple mobile operators helped drive volumes higher.

This comes after some voiced concern over setting expectations too high for the iPhone 4S, and many worried whether it was a significant enough upgrade to attract customers in large numbers. A better 8MP camera with a faster Apple A5 chip, a more reliable antenna, and Siri seem to have been more than enough to drive sales.

Something to watch for as well — Vendors shipped a total of 157.8 million smartphones worldwide last quarter and one out of every 3 mobile phones shipped was a smartphone. This shows a continuation of the trend that should, in short order, lead to the day when all phones are smartphones.

How many iPhones will Apple be able to sell then?

Source: IDC, Fortune, NPD

AT&T has reported sales of 7.6 million iPhone units totaling 80 percent of their overall smartphone sales in Q4 2011.

The iPhone 4S no doubt helped boost iPhone numbers after Apple reported sales of 37.04 million iPhones for Q1 2012 — their biggest quarter ever. Out of the 9.4 million smartphone sales in total for the quarter, 80 percent of them were the iPhone.

• 9.4 million smartphone sales, best-ever quarter and 50 percent more than previous quarterly record and nearly double 3Q11 sales; 82 percent of postpaid sales were smartphones
• Best-ever quarter for Android and Apple smartphones, including 7.6 million iPhone activations
• 571,000 branded computing device (tablets, aircards, etc.) sales, best-ever quarter to reach 5.1 million total subscribers; up almost 70 percent from a year ago
• 12th consecutive quarter with a year-over-year increase in postpaid wireless subscriber ARPU (average monthly revenues per subscriber), up 1.4 percent to $63.76 — more than $6 higher than nearest competitor’s ARPU
• 10.0 percent growth in wireless revenues
• 19.4 percent growth in wireless data revenues, up $956 million versus the year-earlier quarter

In addition to stellar iPhone numbers, AT&T was able to add a large number of data subscribers, including those using the iPad 3G and other data-enabled tablet devices. Revenue for the quarter reached $32.5 billion, a full $1.1 billion more than last year.

We’re looking forward to seeing how Sprint made out for Q4 2011 and, as always, will bring you the numbers on February 8th during their quarterly earnings call!

Source: AT&T

ChangeWave has a new survey out indicating that 54 percent of near-term smartphone buyers are planning on picking up the iPhone 4S over competing devices.

The late December survey looked at smart phone demand trends going forward, and finds Apple iPhone demand remains incredibly strong more than two months after the iPhone 4S release. Among respondents planning to buy a new smart phone in the next 90 days, better than one-in-two (54%; down 11-pts) say they’ll get an iPhone. Apple has never dominated smart phone planned buying to this extent more than two months after a major new release.

The survey, conducted in late December, studied 4,000 North American consumers with the results suggesting huge demand for the iPhone 4S even with it being more than two months old. Based on ChangeWave’s history, this also advocates the iPhone 4S as being Apple’s most popular release, as they’ve never covered the spread of planned smartphone purchasers this far after a major iPhone release.

In addition, Apple continues to lead smartphone satisfaction rates with 76 percent being very satisfied with their iPhone, compared to the nearest competition coming in at around 47 percent with Samsung.

Source: ChangeWave

While Apple has done amazing things with iPhone accessibility features, especially FaceTime and Siri, this prosthetic arm-as-smartphone really has to be seen to be believed.

Trevor Prideaux was born without a left arm, but that hasn’t stopped him from using his smartphone just like everyone else. Trevor, along with medical experts and communications engineers from Nokia, developed a custom prosthetic arm that doubles as a smartphone holder.

“I can now take calls and make texts just by using my one hand, while the phone sits inside my arm.” says Prideaux. “The phone slots smoothly and securely within my limb and is easily removable, when required. I think this would help a lot of people with prosthethic arms – especially those who were not born with the disability.”

It’s really pretty cool, and rather interesting to say the least. It’s great to see those with disabilities are still able to enjoy the full benefits of using a smartphone these days.

The only glaringly obvious problem? He’s using a Nokia C7 instead of an iPhone!

Source: The Telegraph

According to Gfk’s recent survey, iPhone users remain the most satisfied and claim they’ll stick with their iPhones instead of jumping ship to another smartphone platform. Out of all the users surveyed, only 25% of them plan to stay loyal to their current smartphone platform while 56% of those surveyed plan to keep their options open when buying their next smartphone. Out of those users who say they’re staying loyal to their current smartphone platform, Apple users made up 59% of that number. Microsoft phones showed the lowest user loyalty base at only 21%. RIM, Nokia, and Android fell between the 24-35% ranges.

Lead analyst, Ryan Garner had this to say about smartphone loyalty -

“Loyalty with a handset is a lot more complicated these days in that people buy into experiences at the high-end level,”…”If a phone doesn’t do what it says it will do or what the owner hopes it will do, the maker will lose loyalty.”

Most smartphone users rely on owning a smartphone that’s not only user friendly but reliable and stable. Those are the types of things Apple has managed to nail. Not to mention Apple having the most extensive choice of applications available via their App Store. These things all combined could be what keep Apple users loyal. I know a huge factor for me is the amount of money I’ve already invested in the platform through purchasing applications. If I switched platforms, those applications would be rendered useless to me. So to all the members of the TiPb community, what is it that keeps you loyal to the iOS platform?

[via Reuters]

The research firm Gartner reports that, for the second quarter of 2009, the iPhone continues to increase its market share on a world-wide level. In fact, it leads the way with the highest increase of market share, as sales increased by 10.5% from one year ago.

This increase of market share can be accounted for due to a few separate reasons. For starters, the early June price drop of the iPhone 3G to $99 was clearly a great way to move inventory while boosting sales. Apple’s product release timing is also plays a large role in their success. While releasing iPhone 3GS to the market at the very end of the second quarter of 2009 all of the initial sales were included in this report.

Everyone knows the iPhone took mind share early on, and there’s little doubt left they own profit share as well. It will be interesting to see where market share ultimately ends up…

[via MacRumors]

So while Apple is ramping up production of the iPhone 3G, it looks like the rest of the cell phone industry is in a serious slump. Kind of. According to the NPD, (via Ars Technica) only 28 million cell phones were sold this quarter representing a 13% year-to-year decline. But looking specifically at the model-by-model numbers, it looks like everyone is enjoying success on Motorola’s dime.

“Quarterly unit-sales of handsets fell to their lowest level, since NPD begin tracking the category in 2005,” NPD director of industry analysis Ross Rubin said in a statement. “Even so, most major manufacturers picked up market share that was lost by Motorola.”

In related news, MobileSafari has been on an absolute tear since the release of the iPhone 3G. According to Analysts, (via MacDailyNews) MobileSafari has nearly doubled its market share to 0.31% since the launch. Doing rudimentary math, having more handsets on the market that are twice as fast as the old one, well, I guess it adds up.

And to top it all off, our friends at Engadget have created an iPhone specific web page. Why, you ask? Because in 2008, the iPhone/iPod Touch Family has accounted for nearly 96% of all mobile views on their full Engadget site. That’s just jaw dropping.

So that’s the state of the industry. Surprised that the iPhone 3G has had such an effect on the numbers? What’s to come?

As Rene just mentioned in the previous post, we’re getting sales numbers for various iPhone apps and these sales numbers are very, very promising. John Casasanta of development house Tap Tap Tap hit us up on our tip line about his article on the sales figures at the App Store.

Early on, folks in the Blogosphere were able to get a handle on sales figures simply by checking the download count at the bottom of each page. Apple apparently decided that developers might just want to keep some of that info private, so that was taken down around the same time that Apple started actually delivering real sales numbers to developers. Many of these developers, as Rene mentioned, are just going ahead and publishing these sales numbers despite, as Casasanta says, traditional business instincts to hide exact numbers because they don’t want to seem to be bragging or (if things aren’t going well), failing.

But these numbers are news because of their sheer size — it’s almost as if developers are compelled to share in the same way we might if we’d, say, won the lottery. “Look, I know it’s not nice to brag, but Holy Crap Look At This.”

Tap Tap Tap’s “Where To?” (App Store Link) has sold over 3,000 in a week. Eliza Block’s 2 Across (seriously, it’s the best crossword app out there — App Store Link) is selling hundreds a day. Pandora (free and awesome) had 350,000 installs. Facebook’s over a million. We could go on.

We can’t say this information dump from developers is going to last forever, though we sort of hope it does. It’s not just that we’re interested in seeing who’s doing well, it’s that we’re excited for the platform and word needs to be spread now and into the future: there’s money in them thar iTunes pages. What remains to be seen is whether this gold rush will mature into a stable economy/ecosystem/platform. Right now, we think it’s pretty safe to say it will.

If there was ever any question that you could make a living developing iPhone applications, the answer right now is hell yes. After the gold rush (cue Neil Young), there’s a good chance that the iPhone platform will be the Smartphone Economy equivalent of the California Economy — big enough to register as its own national economy if you wanted to measure it that way, an essential part of the actual national economy; the free-wheeling, 3-hours-behind-but-5-years-ahead center of innovation. Phone different, indeed.

Overstatement? Maybe, but with numbers like these it’s tough to avoid.