For every AT&T Android user there are 15 iPhone users: What will be the ratio at Verizon?
The following chart uses comScore data to show the relative consumption of Android vs. iOS by the subscribers of the four major US operators. I modified an original chart published by Silicon Alley Insider.
Context & Ripple Effects
Horace Dediu's Asymco chart, built on comScore data and reworking a Silicon Alley Insider original, puts a hard number on carrier-level platform skew: among AT&T subscribers there are fifteen iPhone users for every Android user. That makes AT&T's base functionally an iPhone franchise, whatever Android's national share may be.
The question the chart poses about Verizon is live because a Verizon iPhone has been rumored for days — a Tuesday announcement event in New York City per a source cited in press reports, plus domain registrations such as iPhoneOnVerizon.com tracked by PocketNow, all still unconfirmed. Meanwhile Verizon is reportedly discounting its Android tablet, cutting the Samsung Galaxy Tab to $499 and attaching $60 in movie rentals, which reads like positioning ahead of a lineup change. If the launch happens, the 15:1 AT&T ratio becomes the natural benchmark against which Verizon's own mix will be judged.
First-order effects
- The comScore-based 15:1 figure gives Apple, Google, and the carriers their first clean per-operator scoreboard, and it frames any Verizon iPhone announcement (still rumored, not confirmed) as a test of whether the skew is an artifact of AT&T exclusivity or a property of the platforms themselves.
- Verizon's Android handset partners face an immediate identity problem: the carrier asking 'what will our ratio be?' is the same one whose subscriber base anchors Android's US distribution.
Second-order effects
- Hardware vendors feel pricing pressure before any launch is even confirmed — Verizon reportedly cut the Galaxy Tab to $499 with bundled movie rentals, the kind of discounting that precedes a portfolio rebalance.
- A second major US carrier carrying both platforms would convert carrier exclusivity from Android's moat into a variable, forcing Google to compete for shelf space and marketing dollars inside each carrier rather than relying on flagship-partner deals.
Third-order effects
- If every national carrier stocks both operating systems, the referee role passes to panel-measurement firms like comScore, whose carrier-level splits become the contested evidence in the iOS-versus-Android narrative.
- The structural contest between the two platforms shifts from who holds exclusive carrier deals to device lineups and upgrade-cycle economics, weakening network lock-in as a determinant of OS adoption.
The trend: US smartphone platform competition is moving from single-carrier exclusivity toward every major operator carrying both iOS and Android, with carrier-level mix data from measurement firms emerging as the deciding scoreboard.