By way of a note recently issued to investors just this week, analysts from Morgan Stanley Research are projecting that the first three months of the year will mostly see the Big Four carriers in the United States (namely Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint) record low subscriber activity.
In the wake of Q4 2017, a quarter that produced an increase of 31 percent year over year in terms of postpaid phone net gains for the country’s national wireless service providers, the first quarter of 2018 will likely show postpaid phone net additions of around 461,000 for the Big Four, compared to 203,000 during the same quarter in the previous year.
According to Morgan Stanley Research’s team of industry watchers, the year over year growth in postpaid phone net additions can be attributed to the fact that last year’s first quarter only featured few unlimited deals from America’s four biggest carriers. When adding US Cellular (widely considered as the fifth biggest mobile operator in the country) into the mix, the total number of postpaid phone net adds should reach about 468,000 in Q1 2018, vastly improving upon the 175,000 recorded in Q1 2017.
Morgan Stanley Research’s analysts also took the opportunity to offer projections for each of the Big Four’s upcoming quarterly financials. For industry leader Verizon Wireless, postpaid phone net gains is expected to be -83,000, due to light subscriber activity for the Big Red during this year’s first quarter, coupled with aggressive promotional deals from rival AT&T.
Speaking of which, AT&T is estimated to post a loss of about 70,000 net postpaid phone accounts. Like Verizon Wireless, the number two carrier in America will see only slow subscriber activity in Q1 2018, despite the fact that it had introduced buy one get one (BOGO) deals for Apple’s iPhone 8 models.
As for T-Mobile, Morgan Stanley Research’s team believes that the Uncarrier will report a 20 percent year over year decline in terms of phone net additions, and manage more than 626,000 phone net adds for the first three months of the year. Years ago, T-Mobile was one of the first to champion unlimited data deals, but now that the rest of the wireless industry has joined in on the unlimited party, the carrier is now feeling the weight of competition from similarly aggressive players in the market.
Meanwhile, Sprint is expected to register a net loss of around 12,000 postpaid phone accounts for the period January to March of this year. Morgan Stanley Research had initially predicted that the carrier would record a gain of about 14,000 during Q1 2018, but the firm has since revised its projections.
