This morning, Canadian carrier giant Rogers announced that they’d managed to sell roughly 255,000 iPhones between its launch in July and the end of September.
While 255,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to the 6.9 iPhones pushed worldwide in the same window, it’s pretty significant in the battle for carrier supreme going on north of the border. With the two other big players of Canada (Telus and Bell) unable to offer Apple’s finest being as their network is CDMA, Rogers is quick to tout the fact that 33% of its new members are either from a competitor or new to cellphones altogether.
It may be a different story next year, however. As Electronista points out, both Telus and Bell are making the switch to HSPA in 2009, removing the only obstacle keeping the iPhone from jumping on their network.
Bell and Telus, while may see an increase in sales in 2009 will never be able to sell as many mobile devices as Rogers. In Canada, Rogers does everything – cable internet, digital cable tv, home phone, they own the Toronto Blue Jays etc etc. So, naturally it’s easy just to tie everything through them.
The HSPA overlay the CDMA carriers will offer in a year or so won’t be backward compatible with current GSM devices – so Rogers looks to remain untouched for a long while to come.