T-Mobile sees improved customer retention on strength of iPhone 7 release

John Legere (Uncarrier 001)

Wireless carrier T-MobileĀ on Monday announced earnings for the September quarter. Total revenues for the quarter were $9.2 billion, an eighteen percent year-over-year increase. T-Mobile said it was able to increase revenue thanks to new T-Mobile One plansĀ and add-ons, the launch of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in September and an influx of prepaid customers who migrated to postpaid plans.

Services revenue during the quarter came in at $7.1 billion, a thirteen percent year-over-year increase. The carrier has added two million new customers during the quarter.

Net income for the quarter was $366 million, which includies a one-time gain of $122 million in spectrum gains.

Branded postpaid net customer additions were 969,000 in the third quarter of 2016.

In addition to attracting customers, T-Mobile is also keeping them longer. Branded postpaid phone churn was 1.32 percent in the September quarter, up five basis points compared to 1.27 percent in the second quarter of 2016 and down fourteen basis points compared to 1.46 percent in the third quarter of 2015.

In wireless talk, churn rate is a measure of the number of people who deflected to another carrier.

Apple is set to report its quarterly earnings tomorrow, but the company won’t be divulging opening weekend iPhone 7 sales.

ā€œIn years past, we’ve announced how many new iPhones had been sold as of the first weekend following launch,ā€ Apple said. ā€œBut as we have expanded our distribution through carriers and resellers to hundreds of thousands of locations around the world, we are now at a point where we know before taking the first customer pre-order that we will sell out of iPhone 7.ā€

Following iPhone 7 launch, T-Mobile CEO John Legere said that preorders were ā€œlike four times bigger than the iPhone 6,ā€ which last year captured thirteenĀ million sales in its first three days of availability.

Source: T-Mobile