To "Move the Needle" on Market Share, Mobile Carriers Must Win"Family" Plan Accounts

Over the past decade or so, a big change in retail mobile service plans has happened. In the business as a whole 68.5 percent of postpaid customers are on family plans. Just 26 percent of plans are “individual” plans.

About five percent of the market consists of business-paid accounts.

Verizon has 72 percent of its customers on family plans and seven percent on corporate plans.

Altogether, at least 73 percent of U.S. mobile consumers are on a group plan of some sort.

There are all sorts of practical implications. For starters, any disruptive attack on market share almost has to affect the family plans, since they represent about 69 percent of the customer base.

The other practical matter is that one would get a wrong result when comparing “individual plans” across countries, especially where most of the buyers are prepaid, not postpaid, and where most sales are of “individual” plans, not “family” plans.