Mobile Week in Review

Report Type: 
Week In Review
Overview

T-Mobile reignites the prepaid fire with a $10/month plan

T-Mobile announced its new prepaid rate plans, dubbed the Connect by T-Mobile plans. The highlight of the new Connect plans is the entry-level $10/month that comes with 1,000 anytime minutes, 1,000 text messages, and 1 GB of cellular data. T-Mobile Prepaid’s previous rate plans started at $15/month offering 3 GB of cellular data. Notably, this plan and the following tier ($25/month offering 6 GB of cellular data) remained unchanged. In addition to the new $10/month entry-plan, T-Mobile also added a new $35/plan, which comes with 12 GB of cellular data. Incidentally, T-Mobile continues to commit to its previous promise of boosting the bucket size of the $15/month and $25/month plans by 500 MB each year, but this promotion was not extended to the new $10/month and $35/month rate plans.

The NPD Take:

  • T-Mobile’s new $10/month rate plan should put substantial pressure on prepaid competition, especially MVNOs who buy wholesale data from operators. The unconventional (and archaic) voice bucket (1,000 minutes) and the 1 GB of cellular data may not be much but it will suffice for the occasional users.
  • The 12GB of cellular data option on the $35/month plan is a solid upgrade from the low- and mid-tier plans, but it is important to highlight that aggressive MVNOs, such as Mint Mobile, offer larger data buckets (i.e. 15GB of data for $25/month or 35GB of data for $30/month) when consumers pay for three months in advance. Nevertheless, the 12GB of cellular data should be meet the needs of most users as NPD’s Data Consumption Report revealed that an average prepaid customer consumed 12.4 GB of cellular data at the end of Q4 2021.

Late March welcomes new Android flagships

Samsung’s latest Galaxy S22 models have been enjoying strong momentum as the sole new generation Android smartphone catering to flagship phone shoppers, but that might change soon as rivals’ competitive offerings have begun (or are soon to begin) hitting shelves. It’s been a couple of weeks since Motorola introduced its flagship Edge+ model, and the phone has now become commercially available at Verizon. The phone, which runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 silicon boasts a 50-megapixel main camera and a novelty 60-megapixel selfie camera. Verizon has begun selling the phone for $849 and is promoting it with a buy-one-get-one-free offer. Another Android vendor getting ready to make noise is OnePlus, which is epected to unwrap its new 10 Pro model later this week. The 10 Pro runs on Qualcomm’s top-level Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 silicon and, like its predecessor, houses special optics manufactured by Hasselblad. Pricing and carrier availability will be announced Thursday, but given OnePlus’ close ties with T-Mobile, it will not be surprising the new 10 Pro finding shelf space at T-Mobile stores.

The NPD Take:

  • The new OnePlus 10 Pro is one of the very few candidates to have the spec list to be able to compete against Samsung’s new Galaxy S22 series, but its success will depend on its pricing and OnePlus/T-Mobile’s efforts in boosting the awareness of the brand beyond the tech-savvy Android buyers. According to the NPD Connected Intelligence Mobility survey, 13% of smartphone shoppers have heard of the OnePlus brand, though only 2.5% of them consider purchasing a OnePlus-branded phone.
  • Motorola’s initial Edge smartphone had an impressive spec list but failed to garner any attraction due to its unfortunate debut timing when the Covid-19 Pandemic began in February 2020. The new Edge+ 2022, on the other hand, does not really match the (Android) market leader Galaxy S22’s feature set, and Verizon’s BOGO-centric promotion may not be enough to move the needle for the brand.
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