Dish officially buys Boost Mobile
On July 1, the DoJ deadline for the takeover of Sprint’s Boost Mobile prepaid assets (and $3.6 billion worth of low-band spectrum from Sprint), Dish officially welcomed the 9.3 million Boost Mobile customer to the new company. Dish’s first order of business was to revive a once popular loyalty-based program dubbed “$hrink-It!", which offers customers a $5/month discount on rate plans (starting at $45/month for 15GB) once they make three on-time payments, and an extra $5/month discount after six on-time payments. Another change that took place on day one was a new logo design that incorporates the Dish signal logo into the Boost Mobile logo.
The NPD Take:
- Dish’s relaunch of the “$hrink-It!" is certainly welcome as it has inherited a quite elusive subscriber base, which is constantly looking for deals to lower costs. Given the the challenges with the network and channel transition (i.e. device procurement issues in retail), Dish’s Boost Mobile customers are prime targets for any prepaid carrier (MVNO or network owner like Metro), thus Dish needs to be aggressive with its service and device promotions to retain subscribers.
Apple to slim down the box?
According to rumors, Apple’s new 5G-powered iPhones may come in much slimmer boxes as the OEM is planning to remove the charging brick and the wired headphones (EarBuds) from the box. Notably, Apple has begun surveying its customers about what they do with their older iPhone charger brick once they upgrade to a new iPhone.
The NPD Take:
- Considering the additional BOM costs of adding 5G to iPhones, Apple’s alleged decision to exclude the accessories will help the OEM to maintain its MSRP and avoid a 5G-driven price hike. The OEM is in a perfect spot to be able to get away with such as move considering that over 90% of iPhone customers have no desire to leave the Apple ecosystem.
- U.S. carriers who are frantically waiting for the 5G-powered iPhone to boost the 5G adoption, should seriously consider building promotional programs to include the charger brick alongside the new iPhones. While this would mean that Apple would pass on the cost of the 5G premium to the carriers, they can recuperate this cost in the long run as 5G networks are most cost-effective (in terms of cost per users) and the new 5G-powered iPhones will be the quickest way of boosting the 5G subscriber base.