US 3G phone sales crack the 50 percent mark
Hello, T-Mobile, anyone home? Despite T-Mobile's giant 2G drag on the overall retail picture, 3G phones outsold their 2G counterparts in the third quarter in the US by a 55 to 45 percent margin. Topping the 3G list was the Motorola RAZR V3m, followed by the LG VX8300 (really?). The number one seller overall was -- you guessed it -- the lowly RAZR V3, a phone that has seemingly well outlasted its retail viability but continues to hustle off shelves as long as carriers are willing to offer them at bargain basement prices. Oh, and yes, we know the whole 3G thing isn't really your fault, T-Mobile![Via textually.org]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chuck @ Nov 21st 2007 2:08PM
I got a RAZR V3xx in May and love it. It seems they made the last RAZR the best one at the same time when the media says its tired of the RAZR. I ended up paying 40.00 out of pocket for it. I dont understand all this razr bashing when its one of the best phones I have owned. I also have the Opera Mini 4 on it and love it. My area has recently been upgraded to 3G as well and its great.
Anthony @ Nov 21st 2007 2:55PM
I just switch from TMo last night. I couldn't wait for then for 3G anymore.
raulr @ Nov 21st 2007 3:05PM
50% is not really saying much. A majority of the phones from Verizon and Sprint are "3G" and have been for a long time. Those two carriers have more than 50% of the US mobile phone users, so it seems that 3G (the GSM flavor anyway) isn't such a big boost to the stats, so T-mobile shouldn't be too worried.
There are still issues to get around with 3G chipsets, like size and battery life. Both are improving but not on par with 2.5G. So though T-mobile is late, they aren't too late where it's impacting them much. Last I checked, T-mobile keeps adding customers at a pretty good pace while Sprint's numbers are dwindling.
Jamar @ Nov 21st 2007 7:13PM
Those Japanese cellphones seem to be pretty good at it. I know that I can get at least 3-4 days of average usage out of my Toshiba 904T. Of course, they don't sell to America for some odd reason- I wish Softbank or DoCoMo would enter the US market.
Jack @ Nov 21st 2007 6:43PM
welcome to the 21st century, no?
TJ @ Nov 21st 2007 8:00PM
a lot of the average consumers just buy 3G phones without knowing what 3G is or if their phones are actually 3G or not. either that or people never use the 3G for data or anything useful.
moe @ Nov 21st 2007 8:12PM
what nobody seems to notice is that 3.5g was not mentioned. the difference between them is huge and between hsdpa and rev.b availability and hardware mostly being that of the 2100 band in europe the numbers above are quite honestly useless. as many cdma carriers have not put forward the rev.b or hardware/firmware to use it the 50% number just says there is a lot of phones avaiable that are fast but their applications are limited. hsdpa on the other hand is growing(slowly) and many companies especially those with no cdma contracts are putting out more and more handsets with 3.5g abilities that far out do any current 3g technology and not just in speed. until the big 3 cellular companies put out rev.b hardware/firmware cdma will find itself losing a battle fairly quickly. As to Motorola and its 3g abilities, they are sparse at best as their firmware has been sub-standard for many years dropping them from the big 3 list. And the reason people bash motorola is they misused their R&D so badly all they could do for that last 4 years is put out the same product with slight upgrades. Motorola themselves apologized for this error and laid off 300 employees last year and cut the R&D budget by billions this year. Don't expect a whole lot from them for some time and expect them to use third party manufacturing in the coming years.
mingkee @ Nov 21st 2007 8:31PM
T-Mobile should drop 3G, and go for LTE
this is the way to go
however, T-Mobile got 20+MHz nationalwide, and 3G just need 10MHz, that T-mobile can reserve another 10MHz for LTE