Feature phone

• T-Mobile
• Tech Industry
• AT&T
• Smartphone
• LTE

AT&T offering $100 to both new and existing customers

Following a back and forth between T-Mobile and AT&T on promotions geared toward customers wanting to jump the carrier ship, AT&T announced today a short term promotion that actually rewards existing customers in addition to new users.

AT&T is shelling out $100 (in the form of a credit) for new lines including smartphones and tablets.

New and existing customers are eligible when you activate a qualifying wireless line

Add a new line for any smartphone, feature phone, tablet, wireless home phone, MiFi puck, or other connected device

You must remain active and in good standing for 45 days; your credit will be applied within 3 bill cycles

The promo runs through the end of March, so it’s not permanent, but it’s certainly a hefty incentive and hopefully of sign of what carrier competition can bring.

• AAPL Company
• iOS Devices
• iPhone
• Apple News
• iPhone 5s

Smart finally beats dumb, but while smartphones rise Apple’s share falls

In the circles most of us hang out, it might seem incredible that featurephones – aka dumb phones – were still outselling smartphones until recently, but that was indeed the case right up to the first quarter of this year. The latest Gartner figures show that smartphones finally broke ahead in Q2, achieving 51.8 percent of worldwide phone sales.

Smartphones accounted for 51.8 percent of mobile phone sales in the second quarter of 2013, resulting in smartphone sales surpassing feature phone sales for the first time,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. Asia/Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe exhibited the highest smartphone growth rates of 74.1 percent, 55.7 percent and 31.6 percent respectively, as smartphone sales grew in all regions.

The news wasn’t quite so good for Apple, with its year-on-year marketshare dropping more than four points to 14.2 percent.

This does, however, reflect a period in which market leader Samsung launched a flurry of new handsets. Apple’s position is likely to improve substantially when the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C are launched, likely next month.

Via TechCrunch