If you needed more proof that smartphones are becoming more commonplace, Verizon can help point out how true it is that most people today own and use such a device. Just announced on Monday, the major US carrier and largest out of the top four carriers in the US, presented its number of gained subscribers for the fourth quarter of 2013. In the fourth quarter alone, Verizon added 1.7 million new subscribers. That’s only a portion of the subscribers they added for the entire year of course, with the total number of new users on the network reaching a massive 4.1 million. So what is Verizon’s end result in terms of total subscriber numbers? 102.8 million to be precise. With a number that big it’s no surprise that many of the users on the nation’s largest 4G LTE network use smartphones.
Of that 102.8 million people, a mere 5 million are prepaid accounts. The rest are postpaid accounts, with 46% of those subscribing to one of Verizon’s “Share Everything” plans. 70% of those postpaid accounts have users who own a smartphone, and 58% of those smartphone owners are using a handset that is 4G LTE enabled. That leaves a little less than half of the smartphone owners on Verizon’s network that are still using 3G devices, which still leaves plenty of room for Verizon to get those customers upgraded to newer handsets that support the 4G LTE bands. Since Verizon’s 4G coverage area spans over 99% of their entire 3G network, there shouldn’t be much hassle from subscribers about being out of coverage range of the faster data speeds. That 99% makes up a total of 305 million Americans, all of which are not obviously on Verizon’s network. So not only do they have plenty of room for 3G to 4G LTE upgrade opportunities, but they have plenty of room for overall subscriber growth as a whole with the ability to add large amounts of new customers.
2013 marked huge gains for Verizon in the way of 4G LTE subscribers. Last year they were sitting at just 23% of their entire subscriber base, and this year they have expanded that number to reach nearly half of their total number of customers, reaching 44% of its network using 4G LTE. Do you think Verizon can continue their trend of adding subscribers and raising the number of users on LTE and LTE enabled handsets for this year?
Source: Verizon
Via: PhoneArena