BillShrink: AT&T’s new data plans will create new class of smartphone user

AT&T’s (NYSE:T) new lower-tier smartphone data plans have opened the door for a new class of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone users, lowering the total cost of ownership for what was once the priciest phone in the market, according to analysis by consumer cost-savings site BillShrink.com.

AT&T’s lower-tier $15 data plan doesn’t meet the needs of most current iPhone users, said Schwark Satyavolu, CEO of BillShrink, but the lower barrier of entry could entice millions of more-casual smartphone users, who have balked at the idea of paying $30 a month for data.

According to BillShrink’s calculations, the total cost of an iPhone under AT&T’s cheapest rate plans now comes to about $2000 over two years, $360 cheaper than the lowest-cost plans for a Droid Incredible on the Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ, NYSE:VOD) network and at least $100 less expensive than comparable plans offered by Sprint (NYSE:S) and T-Mobile (NYSE:DT) for the HTC Evo 4G and the Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Nexus One.

Or course, VZW, Sprint and T-Mobile’s plans still come with unlimited data, while AT&T customers would be limited to 200 MB a month of usage or risk paying for additional data charges. Though AT&T claims most of its smartphone customers consume well under 200 MB, iPhone users go through considerably more. Nielsen Media found that iPhone users consume an average of 400 MB per month, about eight times more than the average smartphone user, Satyavolu said. That would tend to put most iPhone users out of the budget plan range.

Furthermore BillShrink’s own research has found that average data traffic on smartphones has grown 3.5 times in the last 15 months alone, and for current smartphone users Satyavolu expects that rate to climb even faster in the next 15 months, driven by new applications such as Netflix movie streaming and video communications. That means customers who currently fall into the parameters of the 200 MB plan will soon browse, stream and download their way beyond them.

While the low-cost plan may be ideal for AT&T's other smartphone users, it would take a fairly conservative iPhone user to make the most of it, Satyavolu said. “The 200 MB plan is probably not a very good deal for most [iPhone] users today, ... but by offering the cheaper plan AT&T is lowering the barrier of entry for new smartphone users,” Satyavolu said.

What Satyavolu expects is that many current smartphone users will migrate to AT&T’s new upper-tier plan, which delivers 2 GB for $25 a month, a ceiling which will be much harder for all but the heaviest mobile data consumer to breach and one that saves iPhone owners considerably over previous plans. Once the most expensive phone on the market to own, an iPhone with unlimited voice and 2 GB of monthly data is now slightly cheaper than VZW’s equivalent plan, though still more expensive than Sprint and T-Mobile’s. (See BillShrink’s chart on its blog.)

Meanwhile, Satyavolu expects a whole new class of iPhone users to emerge to fill out the lower-tier plans: customers who are intrigued by the smartphone features and functions but don’t see enough value in the device to pay $30 a month for it. Those users will probably consume well under the 200 MB cap, Satyavolu said. As those customers become more sophisticated, they’ll either migrate to bigger-bucket plans or AT&T will start scaling up the cap to meet new benchmarks for average data consumption, Satyavolu said.