iPhone contracts fell 50%

Canadian wireless giant Rogers on Wednesday said that it had only activated 130,000 iPhones in the fourth quarter of last year -- about half has many as the previous quarter. Citing the global recession and slowing consumer demand, the Bloomberg report said that about 130,000 iPhone 3Gs were activated in the period ended December 31, compared with 255,000 handsets in the third quarter. The company said it gained 199,000 wireless subscribers in the fourth quarter.

The statement from the wireless carrier indicated that demand for devices may be worse than expected, according to one analyst who expected iPhone sales to keep pace with the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, the company gained about 199,000 wireless subscribers to about 7.94 million, but 40 percent of its 130,000 iPhone activations were new customers, the statement indicated. That points to slightly more than 25 percent of all new phone activations being iPhone customers.

“It was a big slowdown,” an analyst at RBC Capital Markets based in Toronto told the publication. According to the analyst, iPhone sales should have held at the third-quarter level. RBC rates the Rogers' shares as a “top pick," but doesn’t own them.

While the company sells the iPhone at a loss, it tries to recoup the money in contract fees. The company recently became the first carrier in North American with an all-7.2Mbps 3G network (which allows users to download information nearly twice as quickly than most of AT&T's GSM network in the US). The company also had plans to expand the total 3G area to cover about 75 percent of Canada's total population by the end of last year.

by MacNN Staff