When buying an iPhone, AT&T, Verizon customers stay put

Once an AT&T or Verizon customer, always an AT&T or Verizon customer? That seem to be true of people shopping for a new iPhone. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners drilled down into their own most recent research data about the major U.S. carriers to find out how each wins or loses buyers looking for Apple’s smartphone.

• AT&T and Verizon keep their customers looking to buy an iPhone: on both carriers 94 percent of iPhone owners purchased through their current carrier.
• Sprint customers looking for iPhones are slightly less loyal to the last of the big three carriers to get the iPhone — it has an 88 percent retention rate.
• When T-Mobile customers want an iPhone, they head over to the original iPhone carrier. Sixty-five percent of their customers go to AT&T.
• Sprint gets more new iPhone customers than the rest (16 percent) from “other” carriers, meaning regional or pre-paid carriers.