Digital Products

Device OEMs and carriers spent 2025 marketing AI to consumers who were buying phones because their screens cracked and their batteries died. Hardware failure was the single largest purchase driver across every brand tier and every month from May through December 2025, ranging from 5.6 to 13.2 percent. AI feature priority, by comparison, peaked at 5.1 percent in a single month for a single brand.

The US home internet market is fragmenting into four geographic-strategic formations: Fiber Castles, Cable Forts, FWA Camps, and Satellite Warbands. Based on 682,988 survey responses from January 2025 to March 2026, the central finding is that convergence built on friction rather than satisfaction is a structurally weaker formation that erodes where a superior alternative arrives. The carriers that win are the ones that build formations their customers actually want to stay in, not just formations that are expensive to leave.

Apple’s installed base share rose to 55.9 percent by Q4 2025, up 5.9 points in a single year, while Samsung fell 4.9 points to 27.8 percent. Based on 104,408 US respondents tracked across five consecutive quarters from Q4 2024 through Q4 2025, this report examines installed base composition, price positioning, device tenure, brand consideration, loyalty metrics, and customer satisfaction across the US smartphone market.

T-Mobile leads wireless bill clarity cNPS at +17.7, a 10-point advantage over Verizon (+7.1) and 12-point advantage over AT&T (+5.5). Billing issues drive churn intent at a 2.5x multiplier—customers reporting billing errors or confusing bills show 32.5% churn intent versus 13.2% for those without billing issues. At an estimated customer lifetime value of $1,000+, billing-related churn represents $2-3 billion in annual revenue risk across the Big Three carriers.

Despite Microsoft's enterprise distribution advantages and Office 365 integration, Microsoft Copilot lost 7.3 percentage points of paid subscriber share in seven months while Google Gemini gained 2.9 points, based on more than 150,000 respondents. Distribution advantages do not lock in market position. Employees receiving enterprise AI tools evaluate options and select based on experience. The platform that delivers the most reliable results wins, regardless of vendor seat licenses.

December 29, 2025: The U.S. smartphone insurance sector is undergoing a catastrophic structural realignment. For nearly two decades, the industry's economic model relied on capitalizing on acute loss aversion at the moment of purchase. This report demonstrates why that foundation is fractured and how the strategic inertia of incumbents is creating a massive arbitrage opportunity for competitors.

December 22, 2025: The AI industry spent 2025 betting that stronger engines would drive mass adoption. The data proves that bet wrong. Eight breakthrough model releases in seven months, including GPT-5 and Gemini 3, produced just four percentage points of daily usage growth. 75% of Americans have tried AI, but only 25% use it daily. The bottleneck is not model intelligence. It is Trust and Context.

December 10, 2025: The U.S. wireless market is undergoing a structural inversion as Charter Communications and Comcast transform from wholesale-dependent MVNOs into hybrid network operators. With a combined 20.3 million subscribers generating $3.2 billion in annual wholesale payments to Verizon as of Q3 2025, the economic imperative for infrastructure ownership is absolute.

December 1, 2025: The satellite market is Starlink’s to lose. Amazon with its LEO service is in a challenger position. Although AST Space Mobile is playing in the D2C market, as of today it lacks the double threat of home internet capability that Starlink and Amazon bring to the table. Starlink and Amazon have also won over 20% of all Bead program locations.