Costs of not having the new new thing: i Phone, T Mobile and AT&T


Posted on March 22, 2011  /  0 Comments

Some people ask me about 3G. Is this the ISDN [I Still Don’t kNow] of our time?

But I tell them that new, new stuff gives zing to an operator. That Mobitel in Sri Lanka got a lot of energy from 3G, even on the 2G side.

Now comes more concrete support: If not for the i Phone, T Mobile would not have been sold, say some.

Until Apple introduced its highly popular touchscreen device in 2007, which went on to become the world’s leading smartphone, Deutsche Telekom had been generating decent sales from its American operation, with growth in some years surpassing that achieved in Germany.

But after the iPhone went on sale, sold exclusively at first by AT&T in the United States, T-Mobile USA began to lose its most lucrative customers, those on fixed monthly plans, who defected to its larger American rivals — AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which began selling the iPhone in February.

The percentage of T-Mobile USA’s contract customers fell to 78.3 percent in 2010 from 85 percent in 2006, according to the company’s annual reports. During 2010 alone, T-Mobile USA said it lost 390,000 contract customers to rivals.

“The iPhone effect cannot be underestimated in this decision,” said Theo Kitz, an analyst at Merck Finck, a private bank in Munich. “Without being able to sell the iPhone, T-Mobile was in an unsustainable position and T-Mobile USA became a problem child.”

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