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T-Mobile: Apple's Decision When We Get the iPhone

Friday October 21, 2011 1:40 pm PDT by Jordan Golson
In a statement released yesterday, Andrew Sherrard, T-Mobile USA's Senior Vice President of Marketing, blamed Apple for T-Mobile's lack of an official iPhone offering. He said the main issue remains Apple's unwillingness to build hardware compatible with T-Mobile 3G and 4G networks.

T-Mobile thinks the iPhone is a good device and we’ve expressed our interest to Apple to offer it to our customers. Ultimately, it is Apple’s decision. The issue remains that Apple has not developed a version of the iPhone with technology that works on our fast 3G and 4G networks. We believe a capable version of the iPhone for our 3G and 4G networks would offer an additional compelling option for our customers on a fast 4G network. However, the iPhone is not the only option to experience the benefit that smartphones offer.

Sherrard goes on to compare the iPhone to other smartphones that do support T-Mobile's network, saying that the phones are capable of faster speeds, have bigger screens, and a more advanced camera on one particular phone, the HTC Amaze 4G.

In a defense of T-Mobile that echoes an open letter to their customers last month, Sherrard said "we firmly believe that T-Mobile’s portfolio will give any iPhone a run for its money... With our portfolio of Android, Windows, and BlackBerry smartphones, fast 4G network, and competitively priced worry-free unlimited talk, text, and data plans, we believe it’s a great time to be a T-Mobile customer."
[ 67 comments ]

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gpat
Posted: 8 months ago
Day X: Check out the Android vs iPhone charts on our website!
Day X+1: OMG WE GOT IPHONES COME N GET EM
Rating: 14 Positives / 3 Negatives
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YeahBuddy
Posted: 8 months ago

How can he say that Apple has not built an iPhone compatible with their network, but in a previous statement say that they have over a million iPhone's running on their network...


They're running on EDGE technology, not 3G or 4G standards.
Rating: 8 Positives / 0 Negatives
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hobo.hopkins
Posted: 8 months ago
He might say that T-Mobile's offerings will give iPhone a run for its money, but he can't really believe that. No phone will sell as much as the iPhone 4S, and everyone in their right mind knows that.
Rating: 8 Positives / 2 Negatives
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Savethehodag
Posted: 8 months ago
I've had both AT&T and Sprint (via Virgin Mobile) and T-Mobile is vastly superior, better coverage, rarely lose a connection, better rates. I would rather keep using my $20 dumbphone than switch carriers.
Rating: 5 Positives / 0 Negatives
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macUser2007
Posted: 8 months ago

Everyone knows that T-Mobile U.S.A. is not long for this world. Even if the acquisition by AT&T falls through, T-Mobile will go bankrupt and be gobbled up by the remaining parties at firesale prices anyway. :eek: Hindsight is 20/20, but it really hedged its bets on the wrong frequency.


Everyone?!

While I think this different frequency game in the US is kept up mostly to prevent users from being able to jump easily between carriers, T-Mobiles frequency is weird, indeed.

At the same time, Samsung doesn't seem to have trouble providing phones for T-Mobile. Apple is just being lazy.

For what it's worth, T-Mobile has be best rates (way better than AT&T, in my experience -- I was with AT&T for about 7 years) and it actually has better coverage than AT&T in West Side of LA. T-Mobile data speeds are also significantly better than AT&T.

I hope the merger is stopped -- the US badly needs some real competition, and T-Mobile is the only GSM alternative to AT&T.
Rating: 5 Positives / 0 Negatives
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SoldOutMatinee
Posted: 8 months ago

How can he say that Apple has not built an iPhone compatible with their network, but in a previous statement say that they have over a million iPhone's running on their network...


ya but i think they're all running on Edge speeds :eek:
Rating: 5 Positives / 0 Negatives
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Mike Oxard
Posted: 8 months ago
"T-Mobile thinks the iPhone is a good device"

Just like the rest of the world then.
Rating: 7 Positives / 2 Negatives
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nostaws
Posted: 8 months ago
I am a tmobile and iPhone customer. I would like faster data speeds, but I spend most of my life near wifi anyway.
Rating: 4 Positives / 0 Negatives
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macUser2007
Posted: 8 months ago

I've had both AT&T and Sprint (via Virgin Mobile) and T-Mobile is vastly superior, better coverage, rarely lose a connection, better rates. I would rather keep using my $20 dumbphone than switch carriers.


Yep. I like T-Mobile the best, too. I use a couple of Nexus S on it, and it costs me about $100 less per month than 2 iPhones did on AT&T.

Frankly, people sticking with AT&T or Verizon do it simply because they don't know any better. ;)

;)

samsung has released over 20 android handsets in the past year. That makes their offerings very diluted, cheap, and doesn't denote quality to consumers. Hence the resorting to cheesy names like the fascinate, devour, instinct, behold, intensity, exclaim, rant, etc. Apple's not being lazy at all. They aren't cheapening their brand by making a lot of silly variations, and needlessly impacting their very well-run supply chain by catering to every subset of nearly-bankrupt carriers who bet on the wrong technology. ;)


lol ;)
Rating: 4 Positives / 0 Negatives
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chrmjenkins
Posted: 8 months ago
The Qualcomm chip in the CDMA iphone 4 and all iPhone 4S has AWS capability. Apple has not enabled it. I would say that presumably they have no plans to offer it in the face of a potential merger between the two.
Rating: 4 Positives / 0 Negatives

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