T-Mobile USA Looking to Expand Apple Product Offerings Beyond the iPhone
Following his company's earnings release earlier today, T-Mobile USA CEO John Legere told AllThingsD that the carrier is looking forward to expanding its Apple product offerings beyond the iPhone. Back in April, T-Mobile became the last of the four major U.S. carrier to begin selling the iPhone.
Legere said it is a good sign that the iPhone is only a portion of the company’s sales growth, accounting for just 21 percent of smartphone sales last quarter.
“I think it’s a healthy percentage,” Legere said.
That said, Legere looks forward to more business with Apple, including carrying products beyond the iPhone.
“I think there’s a whole array of Apple products that we look forward to carrying,” Legere said. “We will expand what we offer from them.”
The most obvious new Apple product for T-Mobile would be the iPad, with the other major U.S. carriers already selling and supporting cellular-capable models of the device with data plans. In order to provide official support for the iPad on T-Mobile, Apple would almost certainly have to at least tweak its existing hardware in order to support the AWS 1700/2100 MHz frequency bands used by T-Mobile, something the company did on the iPhone 5 when it launched on T-Mobile. But with an updated iPad expected to launch within the next few months, any frequency support changes would almost certainly just be folded into the new hardware.
T-Mobile may also find itself able to support new iPhone models if Apple launches both an iPhone 5S and a lower-cost "iPhone 5C" in the coming months. The carrier currently does offer the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4, although official device availability is currently limited to areas where T-Mobile has been able to refarm its spectrum to offer 3G/4G coverage on frequencies supported by those devices. Apple would presumably build full support for T-Mobile's frequency bands into any new iPhone models it launches in the United States.
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