It is pretty obvious that Google has been lying about the nature and size of the so-
called activation rates for Android. They have never given this data as part of their legally binding financial reports every quarter. It has just been Eric Schmidt mouthing off at a pr-event.

The numbers just do not stand up to any rigorous analysis. Where are these devices, and who is manufacturing them?

My guess is that Google have stopped issuing this data because of in-house legal objections. It will never be updated again.

Hmmm. The company that "wasn't going to figure out the market" is the only one left reporting numbers. Android has won the Symbian market. Congratulations, Android.

I was once told a story standing in line to see Steve's last presentation at WWDC. The story was from an engineer that had worked (recently quit to do his own thing) at Google for 5 years and most recently in the server activation team for Android. He said the logic for counting activations was really simple:

Count an Activation when a user activates a new phone (by device reset or OS upgrade) when the devices unique ID is uniquely different than the previous phone the user activated.

This kept OS upgrades from being multiply counted and kept a count of potential users. The emphasis was not on device count but user count (allowing a second hand device to be counted as a new user).

Now, this was 19 months ago and it was 2 months old information when it was passed to me. The logic may have changed. Who knows? Google, but they really dodge the question as the exact logic behind "activations".

I realize you are getting this second-hand or third-hand, and you may not have expected each of your words to be parsed... but, if it is just as you say, then it is worse than simply a matter of treating a single user with two devices as two users:

If Google indeed simply checks that the *current* "activation" by any given user is on a device that is uniquely different than only the *previous one* device activation they conducted, then the same devices could indeed be counted multiple times... as long as a different device was updated or reset in between. If Google keeps history of the user's last activation only, and stops the check there, then upgrades that happen to be conducted on alternate devices would allow the same devices to be counted multiple times.

Yes, this method would stop some bloating of numbers and keep it from getting completely out of hand, but there would still be a large number of activations being generated by fewer devices.

You parsed exactly right. We had several hours in line to discuss the impact of this "bloating" of the numbers. At the time, it was about only 10% and growing since most people were still under contract with the Verizon Droid at the time. I would have called this information mostly "first-hand" source. The guy had worked on the Android server side activation team at Google. It is old data and they may have adjusted their counting to reflect second hand devices and such.

The logic at the time was to count the number of Android users (this is what Google cared about) so an activation of a phone by a child of a dad that just upgraded to a new Android device was still a +1 on the number of Android users. The query was simple, fast and cheap. He also said, Google really tried to stress query efficiency on all database operations.

That sounds like a logical way to keep track of user base, which must be a very useful metric for Google, but I have doubts whether that is what Google reports for its activations number just because of a cheaper query. It sounds like the query would be even cheaper and faster if it only searched through IMEI numbers, rather than IMEI+user IDs.

The only reason to prefer this "algorithm" as the activation metric I could think of are the grey market phones with fake IMEI numbers, which are bound to match the legitimate ones, resulting in an undercount if counting is only based on IMEI. At one point these types of grey market phones were widespread in the emerging world and dirt poor countries, so the undercount could be substantial.

Fascinating analysis as ever, Horace.

Does the eyewatering disparity in stats and the real world implications for the manufacturing and existence of discrete devices suggest that any of these stats are at all suspect?

Who is making all these phones? If we add up the solid or spurious (Samsung) stats from the traditional OEMs you track and does that come anywhere close to the total of new devices these numbers imply? Can anonymous Chinese and Indian manufacturers be churning out tens of millions of phones that have magically passed Google certification to make them count as real Android phones? If the activations exclude the non-Google Services devices (as Google suggest), can the implied device count be true?

We've already discussed ad infinitum that Comscore seems totally out of whack with US sales numbers reported by carriers unless T-Mobile and the small 2nd and 3rd tier MVNO or regional carriers are selling an unholy number of Android devices. My spidey-sense is tingling that iOS can be selling well over 60% of devices across the top 3 carriers but somehow come out at 38% after the flotsam and jetsam of US telcos are added up. That kind of swing would imply that these dregs drive over 1/3 of the market. TMob+Metro PCS are <12% of total US subscribers.

Back of the envelope maths using total subscribers as a proxy for sales, and assuming the same rate of sales of devices between Tier 1 and the other carriers (doubtful) suggests that:
330M US accounts
245M AT&T/VZW/Sprint
85M TMob/MVNOs/Regional subscribers
68.5% of Smartphone sales in the 245M were iPhones (2012 Q4)
Assuming the other 85M subscribers bought non-iPhones at the same rate as the 245M, we would still come out to the total market being:
50.5% iPhone vs. 49.5% Non-iPhone (Android/BB/WP7/8/etc.)
I just don't see how it is possible that somehow, the 85M subscribers not on the big 3 can massively overturn the dominance of the iPhone, especially suggesting that Android has over 50% to itself? I call shenanigans on Comscore. I know it is a 30000 person sample not sales data but it is clearly the wrong sample delivering probably false data in representing the market.

See, Horace, your high standards forced me to do analysis I don't have time to do (but it feels sooo good ;-)

I think it is much more likely that Google is lying about activations.

Yes. And Comscore couldn't pick a representative US sample if the prevention of the Zombie Apocalypse depended on it.

I saw a report where 2 chinese manufacturers had about 10% of the Chinese market behid Samsung and Apple. Together their marketshare exceeds Samsung in China by the report.

As an aside it works to both Google and Samsungs advantage not to report any verifiable numbers and let analysts speculate as to market share. Look at what it does to Apple to report real numbers. They miss reported numbers by some value and the stock drops off. Samsung only reports sales and profits by category and Google only reports ad sales.

Your suggestion that ComScore understates iPhone market share of new sales doesn't contradict Horace's analysis directionally, correct? If anything it agrees with it directionally, but "even more so", right?

Absolutely.

The comscore survey measures active install base, not quarterly sales, so iPhones current sales dominance will take a few more quarters before it is truly represented in the comscore survey.

Good point but see my response below. My analytical gut (based on following the US sales for many years) says that it is BS. Comscore thinks that Android installed base surpassed iOS in 1 year (2010). That was the year that there were early Droids on VZW, EVOs at Sprint and some Galaxy 1 models for the last quarter. No way they outsold the iPhone on AT&T 3:1 all year to overcome iOS installed base since 2007. AT&T iPhone outsold VZW Androids 2:1 every quarter in 2010. http://www.asymco.com/2010/...
Are we saying that EVOs on Sprint and the Captivate on TMob somehow outsold the AT&T iPhone by a factor of 2.5. No, I don't think so. Tier 2 carriers weren't even selling smartphones in any volume in 2010.

But, but but but but... The Android activations have been so high for so long they should have shown up by now.

They have. See Samsung's financials.

What are they?

Nice analysis. It might well be that the "not big 3" customers are indeed skewed strongly towards Android though:
- an iPhone w/o subsidy is very expensive, and most MVNOs don't subsidise phones
- on top of that, their customers are probably very price-sensitive.
- plus I'm not sure all other carriers do offer subsidized iPhones, when they do subsidise handsets.

For the "not big 3", an 20/80 (iOS/Android), similar to worldwide figures, would surprise me less than the big 3's 60/40 or 70/30.

I agree that the not-big3 are almost certainly skewed more heavily to Android. I just don't think they have the weight to so massively overturn the dominance of iOS in the majority of the market. This dominance was not only in the last quarter. It has been significant since Oct 2011 and close since Jan 2011. When AT&T was the only seller of iPhones, AT&T was also by far the largest seller of smartphones, almost all of which were/are iPhones. It took Verizon until it got the iPhone to even come close to AT&T total smartphone sales and they are still behind. I don't believe that the small, Tier 2 carriers with their generally poorer demographics have been some hotbeds of smartphone sales (and many of them have had the iPhone for a year or so anyway).

My point is that I doubt whether Android has EVER meaningfully outsold iOS in the US. AT&T led all US Carriers in smartphone sales since 2007. Android didn't sell that well until well into 2011 and certainly not 3:1 as the Comscore slope implies through all of 2010/11. VZW got the iPhone in Jan 2011 which blunted its nascent Android sales and Sprint sold some EVOs through 2010 and 2011 until it too got the iPhone in Q4 2011. We would have to get the detailed data to see it but I cannot see a scenario where Android built up its US share based on early Droids and EVOs sold outside of AT&T to a point where it surpassed iOS installed base in late 2010 (when the iPhone 4 crucified all comers). I call Comscore as being consistently wrong for a long time (their sample is likely consistent) but I don't have the time to gather the data to prove it. Sigh...

You're probably right.

The same subsidized business model is available in Europe too. Perhaps the Android low usage data can be explained by localization. If Android flourish outside the richest nations it can explain why android's users don't use much their phones for buying apps, navigate, buying music, books, services etc... but they use them only as phones.

There is a difference in Europe however, as there are usually a variety of plan rates to choose from, leading to clear transparency in handset pricing.

For example, its possible to get premium android handsets on a cheaper monthly plan than a premium iPhone.

Hence its probably one of the reasons why iPhone marketshare is lower in Europe .

Please be careful when you make statements like this, implying how wonderful "Europe" is as a cell-phone market, compared to the supposed horrors of the US.

In the first place, there is not one cellular market called Europe; to take one example, 91% of SIMs in Finland are postpaid, compared to 18% in Italy.

In the second place, the US cellular market grew in a very different direction from the rest of the world, and for reasons that are not completely unreasonable. The primary issue back then was a desire to maintain the existing long-distance market, while simultaneously allowing the freedom to move across the country that one expects from a cell phone; the need to reconcile these led to the US phenomenon of receiver pays rather than the more usual caller pays; this in turn led to the US offering substantially larger bundles of minutes than Europe; which in turn has led to people in the US using their phones a lot more than in Europe.

To return to "Europe" as a market, Finns and Austrians talk the most on their phones, using about 250 minutes of talk a month per user --- a number that in the US would be considered derisory, where the smallest minutes plan you can get is usually 450 min per month. At the other end, Malta and Latvia spend around 60 min per month per user.

Point is --- that European market that may seem so wonderful to you is mainly just structured differently from the US. People imagine what they will get, for European prices, is US level of services usage, and that does not seem to be the case.
It is frustrating if you happen to be one of the pool of people that genuinely does want very few minutes, or a very small pool of data, or whatever, and wants a lighter-weight plan; but the fact does seem to be that such people are in the minority in the US.

We'd all be better off if commenters spent less time telling us, in the abstract, how wonderful telcos are in "Europe" (or Japan, or South Korea) and more time providing exact details of exactly how they are more wonderful, what the FULL pros and cons are of what they offer, how their business model is faring against competition, etc. IE rather more of what asymco is about --- honest data --- and rather less of what we are trying to avoid --- fanboi'ism.

???

I never said anywhere that Europe had "Wonderful" networks/market.

All I said was that it had more transparent handset pricing.

There is no entity "European market", tariff structures and prices are different, key indicators are different (e.g. smartphone penetration), technology evolution is different (e.g. 4G coverage). I don't know how this is any more transparent than the US.

Here is practical information about European telcos offers (French ones to be precise).

The following is from Sosh, the low-cost (read: no post sale support but same quality version) subsidiary of the biggest French carrier (Orange):

(From http://shop.sosh.fr/forfait...
For 24.90€/month you get:
- Unlimited calls all over France.
- Unlimited SMS/MMS in France, unlimited SMS in Europe.
- 3GB/month (reduced bandwidth above that).
- Up to 42MB/s (as stations allow).
- Voice over IP and tethering allowed (no fees).

- caller ID in/out.

And this is the most expensive plan of the "low cost" category.

As a bonus, the law forces them to:
- abide by the dictionary meaning of the word "unlimited"
- allow you to keep your phone number as you change telcos
- provide you with a (universal, shared accross telcos) phone number which upon access will send you an SMS with details about how many months your contract ties you to your current provider and other useful information (the law dictates which information needs to be present and the SMS format forces them to be brief, hence understandable)

Note that the "low-cost" carriers differ from the regular ones only by the fact that they propose much lower subsidies for the phones (maximum 50€) and the total absence of support, aside from that, quality and specs are the same. The three biggest operators (Orange, SFR, Bouygues) all propose these "low-cost" offers by means of differently named subsidiaries, probably in the hope that their regular non-knowledgeable customers will not realize that that they can switch to the same service (support aside) at a much lower price.

One has to note that the regular offers aren't actually that much costlier than the low cost ones when you factor in the subsidies.

Here's what you get with a 9.90€ iPhone 4 8GB for 69.90€/month from Orange (the biggest operator):
- Visual voicemail (don't ask me but I guess that means you call leave a video message if your phone has a camera).
- Unlimited national calls (receiver never pays).
- Unlimited national SMS/MMS (receiver never pays).
- 5GB per months at LTE speeds.
- 70 TV channels (no idea what that's about).
- Possibility to change mobile every year at an "exceptional price".
- Add 5€ of activation fees and you get an additional SIM cards to use in your iPad 3G on the same account.
- Included mobile failure/theft/loss/damage insurance. In case of failure you get a new model within 24 hours.
- caller ID (in & out), double call, incoming call signal.
- conference call when supported by the mobile (ie, more than two phones communicating together).

These prices are easily one third below North American (read: Canada in my case) ones for much better performance/bandwidth and services.

Getting a phone + plan is as easy as:
- enter shop, ask for the plan
- give them your bank account number and sign them an authorization to withdraw directly from it (no fees from them or from your bank)
- show them your ID
- leave with the phone box and the SIM card and it's going to be up and running within minutes (they say it could be take up to 24 hours but in practice when you plug it in upon leaving the shop it's already active)

When I went to France this winter I wanted a short term plan and hoped to find a 500MB one but I just couldn't find any: the lowest one offered 1GB minimum at a price way lower than what I was used to in Canada. I was simply dumbfounded how low mobile communications prices were there (and probably in most of Europe). Coming back to Canada where I live I felt like leaving the civilized world for a backwater country.

Hmm. For the last 15 years I've been taught that the U.S. Model of "receiver pays" had to do with the fact that in the U.S. there is no way to distinguish between mobile numbers and fixed line numbers thereby possibly forcing a high price on a caller without them knowing. In Europe the number's prefix is different enough to tell you that the number is mobile so that if the caller cannot state "I didn't know it was an expensive mobile number". Feel free to shoot this theory down. It may well be false.

Yes you are right that could be the reason, but nevertheless buying a subsidized iPhone is easier than full price and even if plans are different, entry price point makes more difference than monthly fee.

@Emilio Orione wrote, “If …android's users … use them only as phones.”

For decent build quality, isn't the cost of having the “smart” (i.e., internet) features in Europe something like €150 plus some €10 per month, over and above a featurephone?

That's a rather extravagant overpayment for unused features, especially as all the comments here are how price-sensitive European buyers are.

How do you square this circle?

I just checked, your prices are about right, a tad too high for both.

The examples I have around me of people on cheap phones use them for: free texts, especially international ones (what's app, chatON,... it's amazing how many people have friends and relatives abroad), watch photos (from MMS or Email) on a bigger screen, take photos (smartphone cameras are usually much better), listen to music (smartphones have a lot more storage, and it's easier to get music onto them), game a bit, and run a few despairingly silly apps ("vie de merde", a website about life's misadventures...). Also, Android tends to be easier to use than dumbphones, and it's a bit more socially rewarding (NOT having a smartphone is being a dinosaur, even if you don't really use it). **

I just read an interesting analysis of the French market arguing that there is no "middle" smartphone market. People go either for the top-end iP5, GS3, HTC One... or for $200 discount smartphones, with nothing from $200 to $600.

I think that's because people either count pennies and go for cheap everything, which means unsubsidized cheap phone; or they don't and use contracts and subsidies to finance a nicer phone, or buy a nice phone outright. Subsidies wipe out the middle of the market because once you've accepted the idea of higher monthly payments, the price of the phone becomes mostly irrelevant.

EDIT: **Oh, and free phone calls via Skype....

I don't, usage data are a mystery.

The numbers are so large that all kind of users should be present in both platforms.
Today Horace, smart as always, show a new evidence, localization is different.
Android grows outside US.
I am supposing that if this is true for the majority of wealthy nations, the ones that make more use of subsidized business models, then there can be an explanation for the usage data.
This very very interesting, it has been supposed before, but now we have some backup data that can correlate.

Looking at European market, the medium phone you describe is not the answer I believe.
For my experience European buyers are sensitive to quality and pay for it. The main fact is that 30€ per month is affordable and not so different from 10 or 20€ per month.
I mean it is different if you consider the whole sum after 24 months, but the focus is on the spending of each month and if you can afford the monthly bill.
The subsidy lowers the price differences between higher quality handset and buyers go for the highest quality.

Perhaps the comparison that is most relevant (if not most rational) is against historical feature phone prices (not current prices in a cheap smart phone world)?

Horace, I think there's an apples-to-oranges aspect to this comparison. Comscore's data represent a metric of user base size in the US, which you are comparing to unit sales rates (and cumulative unit sales). The problem is most glaring if you consider the known sales rates in the US during the last Comscore report. Your calculations show that iPhone users in the US had net adds of about 9 million, while we know from carrier reports that iPhone sales during the Dec quarter were upwards of 17 million. Similarly, you show that Android had net growth of about 1.2 million in the Dec quarter in the US (400k/ mo), but if you believe market share reports like Kantar and such, Android sales in the US are only slightly below the iPhones, let's just round off to 10 million for the Dec quarter for instance. All 10 million Android sales count as activations (call them gross adds), but only 1.2 million resulted in net adds for Android in the US. Why the discrepancy (and especially why did churn affect Android more than the iPhone) is an article for a later date.

It's not so much that the iPhone is at price parity in the US, but that the US have no price transparency for handsets:
- almost all smartphones are bought with a contract, which is not the case worldwide
- contract prices are so inflated that smartphone prices within the contract are mostly irrelevant, which is not the case worlwide.

One wonders what would happen if such *price transparency* were present *in the US*.

Example of off-contract retail pricing in France: (and comparison to GS3 price)
- GS3: 16 GB = $600; 80 GB (16+64SD) = $715
- iP5: 16 GB = $885 (+ $280 = +47%); 64 GB = $1170 (+$455 = +64%)
- iP4S: 16 GB = $754 (+$154 = +26%); 64GB = not for sale.

As a reminder, I pay $21/mo for unlimited calls, texts and data (throttled after 3GB, VPN, VoIP, Tethering allowed). The extra price for an iP5@16GB is more than 1 year's worth of network service.

And that's for top-end phones. There are also "good enough" Android phones, that get 4/5 stars on review sites which give 5/5 to both the GS3 and IP4S and 5, for **a third** of those prices.

Apple's sales are very dependent on carriers' ability to bundle phones with contracts to hide the iPhones' cost (and to maintain high contract prices to soak up the iPhones' extra cost). The US market is the exception rather than the rule in that regard: most countries are not only more price-transparent and with cheaper contracts, but increasingly so. Isn't T-Mobile in the US moving that way also ? One wonders how long the US can buck the trend ?

That's what "at price parity" means for the vast majority of people buying phones in the United States. Your objection doesn't seem to make sense and is just repeating the point of the article.

Yes, but Horace's reasoning is upside down: discovering that luxury items sell better when their price is hidden and competition hampered is really stating the obvious. And then wondering what if more markets get similarly skewed is spurious. The free market does ensure that over the long run markets become more competitive, not less. An interesting discussion would be whether telecoms markets are becoming freer or not.

If gas were $100 a gallon with a free car, everyone would get BMWs and Exxon would rush to push the prestige cars. And we'd get plenty of soothsayers about how unbeatable BMW is ^^

And what do you make of Japan, which is the other sizable developed (rich) economy besides the US and Europe? Recent analysis by Counterpoint Point Research cites the iPhone as the main weapon used by Softbank (which is trying to buy Sprint) and KDDI to compete with the incumbent NTTDocomo. The strategy apparently has been so successful that, not only is the iPhone the top smart phone in Japan for 2012, but the "move sparked a battle of smartphones in which Docomo fought back with various new smartphone models, the majority of which were also foreign branded". That apparently resulted in the combined market share of foreign brands surpassing that of domestic brands FOR THE FIRST TIME in the fourth quarter of 2012 in Japan, which has been notoriously hard to crack for foreign phone vendors.

Is the Japanese market for telco svs also non-competitive?

I don't know:
- is it mostly subsidised ?
- are there artificial lock-ins (technology, duration) ?
- are most handset brands distributed by the relevant channels ? (ie, carriers and/or retail)
- are contract prices stable or going down ?

I don't agree at all that those factors are necessarily indicative of a non-competitive market.

In the US:

-- Data bandwidth (particularly 3G and 4G) is a scarce and valuable resource, as anyone who has had to deal with congestion can attest first hand. That's why data plans continue to be quite expensive (in absolute dollar terms).

-- Carriers compete vigorously for subscribers. They do so in the way THEY find most effective, by incentivizing longer term contracts through subsidized handsets (this is nothing new to the US, by the way). They compete by providing the greatest subsidy for the handsets (iPhones) that are most competitive in bringing them new subscribers. The carriers financials are materially impacted by the subsidies (which are just customer acquisitions costs -- perhaps not so different from Google's TAC). The carriers have no incentive to pay the large subsidies just to benefit the phone vendors, and do so reluctantly BECAUSE IT'S COMPETITIVE TO DO SO. In fact, there are many reports of VZ sales persons favoring Android devices because they involve lower subsidies and greater commissions (Samsung below the line marketing spend?), i.e., if the carrier is going to get the customer anyhow, might as well get them for the least subsidy, right?

-- How is any of that irrational or non-competive? IMHO, regulations that dictate to the carriers how they may and may not compete (e.g, forbidding longer term contracts) are counter to free market notions.

In citing Japan as another example besides the US where the iPhone is itself a competitive edge for telco carriers, my point obviously is that its too convenient just to assume these markets are not efficient and competitive because they are different from your experience in France.

I would point out: a US subscriber who paid $199 for an iPhone 4 on a 2 year contract in 2010, can now sell it on eBay with prices during the first quarter of this year that range between $355 and $430 (for fixed price sales) and $280-300 (for auction sales). That's a profit, after 2 years of usage. I have first hand experience with this.

1- if that's so, why are prices going down in other developed, countries, often with denser populations ?

2- Do they ? Or, because telecoms are usually a cartel, do they keep prices high and compete on other things ? As someone else said, high costs of switching are not an indicator of a free market, especially when those costs are artificially created. The focus on subsidies is a marketing gimmick because customers notice the initial outlay more than the total cost over the course of the contract.

3- True, except when there is the risk of a cartel, which there is, strongly. People of the same trade...

4- I would point out that when you pay $199 for an iPhone and then $100 per month for service over 2 years, the cost of your iPhone is not $199. It's not $2599 either. You should calculate the difference between equivalent subsidized and unsubsidized contracts, and tack that on to the iPhone price. You're kinda making my point for me, here.

The monthly rate is the same, whether the user signs up for 2 years or goes month-to-month. The Telco is willing to subsidize for the 2 year commitment -- it's a competitive benefit they are willing to monetize and pay for. If Telcos are in such a strong monopolistic position (which is what you're suggesting with the word "cartel"), how is it that they cannot negotiate a better deal with Apple, to lower or entirely eliminate the cost of the subsidy?

The second one is easy: because Apple have a monopoly on iPhones :-p

The rates question I'm not so sure about, and a bit too lazy to research. I keep coming across US forum posts when guys state they pay $45 instead of $100 by going prepaid and/or MVNO, but can't find an easy recap of prices for comparable features. Fro my faraway perspective, the trick that US carriers have down pat is having people to hunt for discounts instead of good prices :-p

Appreciate the humor, but now you're making my point for me....

Apple can charge a high price of the iPhone (for now) because PEOPLE WANT IT, and for the same reason, its a potential competitive asset (or disadvantage) for telcos to offer it (or not) -- one which they are willing to compete with each other to pay a very substantial subsidy (in the US and Japan, apparently).

It makes no sense for a carrier to charge a lower monthly rate to a month-to-month user than a 2 year contract customer for the same data usage (a scarce resource). You pay for the flexibility to terminate any time (or on the flip, the carrier is willing to pay you to give up the flexibility). I gather in France that market mechanism is disallowed by law?

OK, found a nice article with detailed calculations for you:
http://www.cnet.com/8301-17...

Summary over 2 years, phone included:
Verizon Wireless -- two-year contract: $2,915
MetroPCS -- No contract carrier: $1,820
You would say you saved $300 on the phone ($200 on Verizon, $500 on MetroPCS); I would say it cost you $1,100 extra :-p

Strange that the contract carrier ends up 60% more expensive than the no-commitment one ?

maybe this is too late to the party but,.. Here goes,.. Much as I would like for you to be right,.. You're missing the obvious,.. Population density. The US and Canada are vastly more difficult and expensive to provide service to than France,.. Or any other single European country,.. Or all of Europe for that matter,.. So is it really surprising that the US is more expensive than Europe and Japan? No.

Is it surprising that Canada is even more expensive? No.

Metro PCS is about the cheapest provider in the US but only available in specific Metro areas,..

I hate cell carriers as much as anyone,.. They are way too sneaky about the plans, here in the US at least,.. But there is no way it is fair to compare all of the US to all of France straight across. Much as I would love French rates.

Couldn't help noting that the availability of MetroPCS competing on price goes to show a healthy competitive market, no?

Should compare VZ contract prices for VZ non-contract prices. So much more goes into choosing VZ vs. MetroPCS than just the price.

Yes. The question is, has been, and due to the lack of any meaningful answer seemingly always will be: why do people want the iPhone :-p

Granted, it makes no sense for no-commitment prices to be lower than contracts. Fact is, that's the case almost everywhere. It was the case in France even before any laws, it still in the case I'm pretty sure in the US too even today. That's a strong indicator that sales tactics (subsidies, lock-in, complicated pricing schemes...) are hiding a non-competitive market. At least, non-price-competitve market, there usually is competition on gimmicks and discounts. But not on price.

Many people have posted, here and elsewhere, many reasons the iPhone (iOS) is a superior product/platform. I suggest we just leave it that you just don't (or won't) get it, and Apple has lost your business.

I don't follow the logic in your second para. You seem to concede that it makes no sense to charge a non-contract customer less than a contract customer, but then say that that is proof positive of a non-competive market? I confess I'm getting a bit tired. So respectfully, lets drop it.

not more, less.