To small carriers the iPhone is about prestige, not activations

Midwestern regional carrier Cellcom won’t reveal how many iPhones it sold last quarter, but according to CEO Pat Riordan the specific numbers are irrelevant. The iPhone is luring new customers into its stores, it’s keeping old customers loyal, and it completes Cellcom’s smartphone portfolio. “Customers were telling us they were simply going to leave us because we didn’t have the iPhone,” Riordan said. “We know are sales had been falling between the end of the year and April, and we think not having the iPhone was the reason.” The iPhone is giving Cellcom’s current customers a lot of reasons to stay: 75 percent of its iPhone sales were upgrades. The iPhone’s other key benefit is its allure, Riordan said. While there are definitely customers that enter Cellcom’s stores and zero in on the Apple display — ignoring all other merchandise — a good deal of customers are lured into a Cellcom retailer by the iPhone only to leave with an Android device, Riordan said.