Feature Article

Free eNews Subscription>>
September 30, 2013

T-Mobile Sees US Sales Climb Thanks to iOS Sales, New Discounts

It was a big quarter for T-Mobile, according to reports from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, which saw T-Mobile's share of the United States’ smartphone market reach 13.2 percent, or the highest share of sales the company has seen in the last year. This represents a growth of 1.1 percent for the company, which also turns around a darker trend involving year-over-year declines for the company.

As for why T-Mobile has managed to turn sales around in the last year, there seem to be two big reasons for the change: the new iOS hardware releases, and some critical decisions in the way T-Mobile markets devices. While Android was still top seller, taking fully 55.1 percent of the market as a whole, iOS stepped in with 39.3 percent, which was up an additional 5.4 percent over the same time a year prior. The other devices, meanwhile, saw sales remain comparatively static, including Windows' three percent of the total market, and BlackBerry's slip into the catastrophic at just 1.8 percent of the market.

While objectively, T-Mobile's 13.2 percent of the United States market sounds good, it's actually better when compared to its competitors. Verizon, still the top seller in the field, holds a 37.1 percent share of the market, while AT&T held on to second place at 21.7 and Sprint maintained third by an increasingly narrow margin at 14.6 percent.

Indeed, the appearance of a new iPhone was likely a tide that lifted all boats, but for T-Mobile, some new changes in strategy were likely to have helped as well. T-Mobile's move to the “uncarrier” strategy allowed it to offer programs in which users could more readily update phones to a newer version when such an animal was released. For instance, the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4 saw some significant discounts as a result of T-Mobile's new plan, and that was likely to have driven at least some business in that direction. Some have even projected that the other mobile providers were essentially forced to roll out similar versions of the T-Mobile program or risk falling seriously behind.

This does somewhat illustrate the problems that can be had when it comes to attempting to compete on price; unless there are other motives for going with a certain product or service, competing firms can simply adjust prices to match and leave the other competitor with a significantly depleted edge. Competing on price is all well and good—the terms of a fragile economy tend to require it—but it's an advantage that seldom lasts. Competing on the strength of proprietary technology or features no one else can—or will—offer is usually better, though to be fair, T-Mobile likely thought that no one else would try to allow more rapid updates to contract phones.

Still, it's been a good quarter for T-Mobile, and with the holiday shopping season about to kick up in earnest, it's the kind of move that may well pay dividends even into the fourth quarter of 2013, and beyond.




Edited by Alisen Downey


FOLLOW MobilityTechzone

Subscribe to MobilityTechzone eNews

MobilityTechzone eNews delivers the latest news impacting technology in the Wireless industry each week. Sign up to receive FREE breaking news today!
FREE eNewsletter