It’s been a rough year for T-Mobile, the only major U.S. carrier to not yet offer the iPhone to subscribers.
And the carrier is paying dearly for not offering America’s hottest smartphone to its base.
This week, T-Mobile reported disappointing quarterly earnings showing that the carrier lost approximately 700,000 subscribers primarily due to the popularity of Apple’s new iPhone 4S.
“Sequentially, the decline in branded net contract customers was driven primarily by higher branded contract deactivations as a result of the launch of the iPhone 4S by three nationwide competitors in mid-October,” T-Mobile said in its report.
“Not carrying the iPhone led to a significant increase in contract deactivations in the fourth quarter of 2011,” added T-Mobile USA CEO Phillipp Humm. “In 2012 and 2013, T-Mobile USA will invest to get the business back to growth, including an incremental $1.4 billion investment in its network modernization initiative, which will total a $4 billion investment over time.”
Unfortunately for T-Mobile, however, many analysts and industry watchers believe that T-Mobile’s grandiose vision of growth will continue to be curtailed by consumers who want that which T-Mobile still can’t provide – the iPhone.