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iPhone, Android face-off: Telstra counts up

Smartphone sales were a major factor in Telstra adding 1 million new mobile customers in the first half of this financial year, with over 690,000 iPhone and Android devices sold, CEO David Thodey revealed today.
Written by Josh Taylor, Contributor

Smartphone sales were a major factor in Telstra adding 1 million new mobile customers in the first half of this financial year, with over 690,000 iPhone and Android devices sold, CEO David Thodey revealed today.

This morning the telco revealed as part of its financial results that seven of 10 post-paid mobile plans sold were for smartphone devices. The dominant player remained Apple, according to Thodey, saying that the company had sold 400,000 "new iPhones" in the second half of 2010. The Android offerings were not far behind, however, with Google-based smartphone accounting for 290,000 of the sales in the same period.

The company admitted in its half-year results this morning that the growth in subscriber acquisition had lead to a short-term increase in costs, but Telstra noted that it had improved disconnect rates with a decline from 15.8 per cent to 9.7 per cent.

Apple also dominated the emerging tablet market for Telstra with the iPad, but there was competition.

"The number of iPads is about 70,000," Thodey said, adding that sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab were "not as many but going OK".

Thodey admitted that iPads were an "emerging category" of prepaid mobile broadband products without a high return for the company yet because iPad users tended to roam between Telstra 3G and Wi-Fi connections.

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