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Jun. 3, 2009

Recently published numbers from IDC reveal that, of the 3.5 million retail net new subscribers added by the top 10 U.S. wireless carriers in the first quarter, 75.2 percent were prepaid users.

That is actually 2.63 million new mobie phone users that chose a prepaid plan vs a monthly package.

IDC wireless analyst Richard Murphy says in a report that "prepaid carriers in the U.S. are rolling out competitive price options for consumers and they are mostly based on prepaid plans."

"Overall, wireless users are looking closely at their plan options during this very tough economic cycle. If mobile phone users continue to look to save money on monthly bills, prepaid offerings could become a very serious option,” added Murphy.

On average, prepaid wireless subscribers currently account for about 19.2 percent of the top 10 carriers’ customer base, and IDC expects their numbers to remain strong through in the second quarter as well.

Data revenues also remained strong, comprising rougly 24.9 percent of total retail service revenue.

For its part, on the postpaid side, Verizon Wireless closed the quarter at 1 million net new additions, while AT&T finished with a little less than 875,120.

In terms of prepaid net new additions, MetroPCS finished with 687,000 new subscribers, TracFone ended with 567,000 and Leap Wireless managed to gain about 492,000 additions.

Murphy added that “with the U.S. wireless subscriber market reaching a point of saturation, wireless carriers are becoming more aware of movement among customers. Overall, wireless carriers must not just focus on bringing new customers in the door-- they must also pay a lot of attention to current customers as well."

"Those mobile phone carriers that are able to avoid customer churn will stay competitive and should continue to grow going forward,” added Murphy.

The mobile service market is becoming increasingly saturated. There are currently 274 wireless carriers in the United States.

IDC expects second-quarter gross additions to remain close to 20 million users, with reports that wireless retail subscribers will hit 286 million by this time in 2010.

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    This article was featured on Business 5.0 and on Tech Blog.

Source: IDC.