T-Mobile answers Verizon iPhone with free handsets
A little Valentine's day luv
Just as the much-ballyhooed Verizon Wireless iPhone is making its debut in the US, smaller rival T-Mobile is attempting to grab the spotlight with a new promotion: on this Friday and Saturday, all of its phones will be free with a two-year contract.
And that "all" includes high-end models such as the Android-equipped HSPA+ myTouch 4G and G2, and the Windows Phone 7 HTC HD7. A total of 30 free phones will be available from brands that include HTC, Garmin, Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung.
Don't think that T-Mobile's move is necessarily an act of desperation in response to the iPhone juggernaut. Although the company is number-four among US wireless carriers, it reported a comfortable 33.8 million customers as of the end of the third quarter of 2010, up from 33.6 million at the end of the second quarter.
Number-three Sprint Nextel reported having 48.8 million wireless customers at the end of the third quarter – but determining which carrier is number one is a bit more difficult. Although AT&T recently reported that it had 95.5 million wireless subscribers, and Verizon puts its wireless customers at 94.1 million, one analyst notes that the two companies count connections somewhat differently.
T-Mobile is hooking its promotion to next Monday's celebration of chocolates and roses, calling it "a Valentine's offer to fall in love with." However, the company suggests that you not dawdle: "All phones will be available while supplies last, so customers are encouraged to arrive early."
T-Mobile has tried this inducement once before – on Father's Day 2010 – apparently to great success. According to TmoNews, that promotion resulted in the company's largest one-day sales ever.
With two free-phone days in this Valentine's promotion, el número cuatro is hoping to best last Daddy Day's 110,000 new customers. ®
COMMENTS
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Paying for a handset on a contract? What a very strange idea!
Re: My First Thought As Well
I've recently been doing those exact maths for the HTC desire Z... Even with buying myself out of the last 3 months and getting it on an upgrade it works out better than buying the phone separately and going SIM only. Being able to get £100 back for my old N70 from phones4u is even better... Did the same a few years ago, so I had to get another N70 off ebay.... £20 :-)
I wonder
If this applies to any phone on any contract... For example, a nice shiny new top end phone could set you back £400, but if you could get it on the cheap as chips £10 per month contract (or whatever the US equivalent is) then you'd be getting quite a bargain, and you'd get free calls, texts and/or data (although probably not a massive amount).
My First Thought As Well.......
......but I'm wondering what the TCO is over a two year period for various patterns of 'ownership' and usage; compared across different countries. Has anyone done the research?
Analyst is right
AT&T *LOVES* fudging the numbers. The figure AT&T calls number of "customers" is actually the total number of connections. Verizon has 94.1 million customers, but 102.2 million connections, well ahead of AT&T's 95.5 million connections.
Anyway... the reason for the IPhone running on EDGE on T-Mobile's network is T-Mobile runs their GSM/EDGE network within the 1900mhz band (which is widely supported) but they and IWireless both run their 3G in the AWS band (which is 1700mhz uplink and 2100mhz downlink.) Very few devices supports this band, and IPhone is not one of them.
