I haven’t forgotten what T-Mobile said last December about selling Apple products in 2013. “T-Mobile USA has entered into an agreement with Apple to bring products to market together next year,” the carrier’s parent Deutsche Telekom wrote in a press statement back then.
Four months later, the nation’s fourth-largest telco finally landed the iPhone and is now looking to add additional products to the mix. According to its outspoken CEO John Legere, T-Mobile is looking forward to carrying “a whole array of Apple product.”
It’s kinda expected that T-Mobile should next start offering iPad and perhaps iPod touch devices as well. The way Legere framed it sounds like the company may be eyeing non-iOS gear, too, such as Mac notebooks and perhaps even Apple’s AirPlay wireless appliances…
Ina Fried, reporting for AllThingsD, has a quote attributed to the T-Mobile CEO:
I think there’s a whole array of Apple products that we look forward to carrying. We will expand what we offer from them.
And expand they will, that’s for sure. Since landing the iPhone 5, the carrier has managed to revert the customer defection trend.
During the June quarter, T-Mobile reported its strongest customer growth in four years, adding 685,000 branded postpaid phones, 1.1 million customers altogether and selling 4.3 million smartphones, a whopping 71 percent annual increase.
Though it wouldn’t say exactly how many of those 4.3 million smartphones were iPhones, T-Mobile revealed the iconic handset accounted for approximately 29 percent of its branded gross customer additions and upgrade smartphone sales.
A study by the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners has estimated that landing the iPhone saved T-Mobile from losing at least 300,000 customers as one out of each four customers said they were looking to jump ship before learning about the iPhone.
Are you looking forward to checking out “an array of Apple products” at T-Mobile stores later this year?