Earlier today, the company unveiled that they had reached their 9 million subscriber mark. The growing number Cricket has earned over the years is a testament that they are doing a good job in attracting customers and keeping them.
Back in 2014, AT&T acquired the company and shortly relaunched it as Cricket. The company at that time had around 4.5 million subscribers. Ever since then, the prepaid brand acted as a the forefront of AT&T's brand; all thanks to the exemplary shopping experience it gave to its customers. Not to mention, the company was able to offer excellent plans and pricing options with transparency.
Three years later, the two brands, Cricket and AT&T PREPAID (previously GoPhone), merged into a single business group called AT&T Prepaid Portfolio. This led them to have a strong performance throughout the year and even earning the group a title of being the fastest-growing prepaid provider. On the same year, Cricket earned the #1 rank on Forrester's annual US Customer Experience Index Study.
It's probably safe to say that if Cricket has 9 million subscribers, AT&T PREPAID has around 5.9 million subs. These numbers make up for AT&T Prepaid Portfolio's current 14.9 million subscribers, which grew 1.1 million from just a year ago.
With these earnings, we're looking forward to what Cricket has in store for the months to come.
Source: Cricket Wireless
So ST and CKT have 9 million, do we know how many Metro and Boost have?
ReplyDeleteMetroPCS and T-Mobile Prepaid have 20.7 million customers combined
DeleteBoost and Virgin combined have 9 million.
I'd guesstimate:
MetroPCS 15 million
Boost 7 million
T-Mobile Prepaid 5.7 million
Virgin 2 million
It would be interesting to see how much AT&T's mvnos have grin or not.
ReplyDeletegrin?
DeleteI think they meant to say gain
DeleteLike fewer promotions, price increases ?
ReplyDelete"With these earnings, we're looking forward to what Cricket has in store for the months to come."
With at&t "sweetening" their plans, I don't see this cricket number staying steady for long.
ReplyDeleteThere are some factors against that:
Delete- Even though AT&T Prepaid is improving, the multi-user discount is still not as strong as Cricket's.
- AT&T Prepaid ridiculously don't even offer Voice over LTE (including HD Voice), or Wi-Fi Calling, like Cricket does.
- Many of the less-wealthy people with prepaid service like dealing with the small stores in strip malls that specialize in one brand (like Cricket, MetroPCS, and Boost Mobile stores and kiosks).
For some reason, many of those customers can't handle the process of going into Target, Walmart, or Best Buy and purchasing and installing a SIM card and setting up a new account.
Speak for yourself, buddy.
DeleteDealers streamline the process by handling all the chore-like data crunching, which most people don't need or want to waste time with.
It's also exactly the same as going into a parent brand store and leasing a device, which huge swaths of people do every day regardless of their income level.
And because Cricket's prepaid phones already come with a sim card included, it's a matter of course that nobody except BYODers will ever be buying standalone sims at big box stores.
Only a minority of customers actually know the hobby well enough to buy unlocked and get the best value, mostly because they have better things to do like working, raising a family, or selling a kidney to pay the mortgage because their entire department just got downsized.
The Cricket Nation is growing.
ReplyDeleteToday nine million, tomorrow the world.
Given the 8 Mbps / 3 Mbps / 1.5 Mbps (video) throttle, the march around the world will take a lot longer than one-day...
DeleteTo be fair, only very few phones in very few areas get 100+ mbps on any prepaid carrier, which is the bare minimum speed for near-instant gratification.
DeleteBelow that, we're all just schmucks waiting for that download to finish.
Had AIO when it released nationwide by AT&T before they bought Cricket off of Leap and merged them. Have been happy ever since. No issues besides one server outage that lasted a few hours a few years ago. Have gotten more high-speed allotments since the start and no price increases. Never had an issue with "soft cap" data either when I went over. I'm shocked more Boost and Movil customers are still there and haven't ported over. I cancelled my overpriced primary Verizon line about six months in and have never looked back.
ReplyDeleteMetroPCS scored 21% higher in the Tom's Guide Best Bargain Carrier ratings.
ReplyDeleteThey have millions more customers than Cricket.
And yet they still lock your sim to only one phone, so you'd better travel with a backup line.
Deleteyou can avoid the one phone sim lock by using t-mobile itself, or ultra mobile or mint sim.
Delete>98% of customers don't read phone blogs or swap sims like sweaters. They do care about value, and MetroPCS is #1 for good reason. Metro has 3X the number of employees they had when the merger took place. And the new Tmo says they will build hundreds of new stores and hire thousands of new employees to support their new rural coverage. They are leaving crickets in their dust.
DeleteThey have grown, just about doubled in size since the merger low mark.
ReplyDeleteBut after 4 years and $millions spent on branding, advertising, stores and channels Cricket is no bigger than Straight Talk. The subscriber gap with Metro has grown over this time.
Good, but not great.
straight talk and (all carlos slim brands) had 30 million prepaid customers just a few years ago, Just 23.1 million customers in the fourth quarter of 2017. They will only keep going lower, Here is why. Cricket metro pcs and boost have store locations where customer get free phone's to switch, Walmart employees are not knowable about products and don't get paid to help customers.. I see carlos slim brands at 10 million customers in as few as 5 years
DeleteSlime brands did announce a store building plan a while ago. Not sure how its going. Was an article here on PPPN about it.
DeleteThey're nowhere in sight.
DeleteAccording to this article from July there are 81
Deletehttps://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/tracfone-quietly-opens-dozens-u-s-retail-stores
Off topic, but is there anyway to get Scam ID on Mint? Or is that only a Tmobile luxury? I know Mint is not owned my Tmo but it does use its network.
ReplyDeleteYou can get the equivalent of T-Mobile's Scam ID by installing the HiYa, Mr Number, or TrueCaller apps, or by signing up for NoMoRobo
DeleteCricket attracted me (& I suspect many others) for a mo. with the Galaxy S8 $350 deal they ran for a month. Wonder how many like me never stayed/paid for a 2nd mo.
ReplyDelete