“Prepaid phones gaining customers” |
| Prepaid phones gaining customers Posted: 12 Sep 2010 12:12 PM PDT Sales have never been better for MetroPCS. The prepaid cell phone retailer broke records in the first and second quarter of 2010 with new subscribers to its no-contract, monthly flat-rate mobile service. Once aimed at customers with poor credit or those who rarely used a cell phone, prepaid phones increasingly are drawing customers angered by mobile bills of $100 per month, said Steve Roberts, regional vice president of sales and distribution of MetroPCS's Miami office. Some parents are even buying prepaid phones to teach their teens to limit costs. What's keeping those customers with MetroPCS and similar services are phones common in the marketplace but new to prepaid customers: feature-rich smartphones. To keep up with smart-phone demand, MetroPCS added a second BlackBerry phone to offerings this summer. A phone that runs on Google's Android operating system is "on our roadmap," Roberts said. The company will be adding 4G wireless speeds to Florida by the end of the year. Competitor Boost Mobile just launched its first touch-screen smartphone and first Android smartphone -- the No. 1 selling smartphone operating system in the U.S. All major cell phone carriers also offer prepaid plans and phones. Service giant Sprint has seen 60 percent of its new customers this year choose a no-contract option, such as Boost or Virgin Mobile -- both of which it sells. "The economy was a catalyst for people to look at no-contract options, and people adopted it and are happy," said Neil Lindsay, chief marketing officer for Sprint Prepaid.The numbers tell the story. Monthly bills for smartphones tend to run around $70 to $120 a month on plans from major providers when part of a two-year contract. Those contracts help subsidize the cost of the phone, bringing prices for the latest, most advanced phones to about $200 -- and sometimes far less. But without a contract, the initial cost of a smartphone is more expensive -- and the phone may have fewer features. Boost's Android phone, the Motorola i1, costs $350 -- and runs more slowly than newer versions. The BlackBerry Curve 8530 is $230 at MetroPCS and $250 at Virgin Mobile; neither is the latest model. But the monthly bill for those prepaid phones is locked to around $60 a month -- which means that over a two-year period, buying the phone and sticking with the prepaid plan is cheaper. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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