T-Mobile would be in the same league as its competitors AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE: S) and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) after it becomes a carrier for iPhone next year.
According to a representative of T-Mobile, who explained the situation to ABC News and confirmed that the company has entered into a contract with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) to market products jointly from coming year. The representative added that further details will also be provided later.
John Legere, the chief executive officer of the company said that a specific category of customers would not visit their store simply because they did not have iPhone. This is the reason why they have entered into such deal after a long and hard work.
However, it has been made clear that T-Mobile is not going to pay any subsidy on the purchase of iPhone. The decision of not offering the iPhone at lower rate is said to be the potential downside of the decision of adding iPhone to the services of T-Mobile. The customers will have to pay a sum of money initially similar to what they use to do for prepaid services, but a cheaper monthly rate is expected.
T-Mobile is giving certain facilities like allowing the customers to upgrade their phones and pay just $99 for the iPhone allowing them to pay the remaining amount in small installments each month. The only thing that the customers might find a value buying iPhone with T-Mobile is the company offers 4G for less money as compared to what most of its customers are offering.
Although no specific date has been announced when iPhone can be expected to arrive, Legere just added that the rolling out of this device will be a “dramatically different experience”. He also stated that the reports stating about the dates and things expected to happen are all wrong.
Experts are of the opinion that although this addition is not going to bring much impact for T-Mobile, the overall sales for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is definitely going to improve. Moreover, it is predicted that 4 million iPhones could be sold in C2013 by T-Mobile or at least 2 percent of 179 million that they have forecasted.
Shares of AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) were up by 0.25% to close at $33.73, Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE: S) were down by 0.70% to close at $5.69, shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) were down by 2.56% to close at $533.25, and shares of Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) were down by 0.09% to close at $44.41.
