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T-Mobile revealed today in its Q3 2013 results that it sold a total of 5.6 million smartphones in the quarter, including 3.6 million under its own brand. As noted by AllThingsD, T-Mobile Chief Marketing Officer Mike Sievert indicated that the iPhone represented 15% of that latter number, putting iPhone sales for the quarter at just 540,000.
T-Mobile noted during its earnings conference call that it felt the iPhone sales percentage could have been better if it had had better supplies of the iPhone 5s at its launch in the waning days of the quarter. Many customers undoubtedly held off from purchasing iPhones for much of the quarter in anticipation of the new models, but T-Mobile was unable to make up for that slack following the launch due to very tight supplies.
On September 20, 2013, T-Mobile started selling the iPhone 5s and 5c with very attractive introductory prices of $99 down and $0 down, respectively. Total smartphone sales, including sales to branded prepaid customers, were a record 5.6 million units in the third quarter of 2013, equivalent to 88% of total units sold, up from 86% in the second quarter of 2013.
Overall, T-Mobile announced the addition of over one million new customers to its network and service revenue growth of 8% year-over-year.
Earlier this year, T-Mobile became the last major U.S. cellular carrier to begin selling the iPhone and has attempted to differentiate itself from other cellular networks with new 'customer-friendly' rate plans that involve no annual contract. Earlier this week, T-Mobile CEO John Legere assured that all iPad customers on the carrier would receive 200 MB of free monthly data with "no exceptions", although customers must either have phone service through T-Mobile or sign up for at least a $20/month 500 MB tablet data plan if they wish to take advantage of the carrier's interest-free financing on iPad purchases.
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(View all)For those wondering why only 500,000 iPhones, you have to remember that at Tmobile stores supplies of the 5S were severely constrained. In fact most stores still don't have them in stock. Also for a good chunk of the quarter Tmobile was selling all of their phones for $0 while the iPhone 5 was excluded (per Apple's request), so a lot of their customers went for Androids. Plus in Apple stores those who want an iPhone for Tmobile have to pay full retail upfront because Apple doesn't handle the financing like TMO does in their stores.
Hopefully they continue to take customers from the big 2 and maybe force them to change some of their policies. Also hopefully they can find a way to acquire some low band spectrum to increase their rural high speed data coverage.
As of right now I'm loving my unlimited LTE iPhone 5S on Tmo.