AT&T to top Verizon in 2011: market research firm

Anyone watching the data coming out of financial reports from Verizon and AT&T couldn't have missed how AT&T, the nation's second largest wireless carrier, is creeping up on Verizon Wireless (90.1 million subscribers for AT&T vs. 92.1 million for Verizon) at last "count." In a report issued Tuesday by market research firm IE Market Research, IEMR said that this will continue, with AT&T overtaking its currently larger rival by spring of 2011.

The report stated that Verizon Wireless' market share will rise from 31.9 percent in 2009 to 32.5 percent in 2014, while AT&T's market share will increase from 29.8 percent to 34.8 percent over the same period. While IEMR said that Verizon Wireless would be the more profitable than AT&T in 2011, they added that AT&T will regain the edge in that area by 2014.

Sprint, however, will continue to a downward trend in its subscriber base, the report said. It's market share will continue to decline over the next five years to reach approximately 13 percent by 2014.

What the report doesn't seem to address is a possible Verizon iPhone, which most seem to believe will start shipping sometime in Q1 2011, or perhaps as early as January. That could make a significant dent in AT&T's subscriber base, although AT&T continues to discount any such mass exodus.

The report also does not address the migration of Verizon to LTE. Verizon is far ahead of AT&T in its LTE testing and rollout, and LTE will also address the issues with CDMA being primarily U.S. network. Additionally, it's thought that Android "world phones" (with GSM as well as CDMA capability) will be appearing soon.

On the other hand, it's been shown that most of the iPhone 4 sales have been current, rather than new AT&T customers. Thus, it's unclear if a significant number of AT&T customers will migrate to Verizon, though dissatisfaction with the AT&T network is the number one complaint about the iPhone.