Hasta La Gadget!

It looks like T-Mobile was onto something with its UnCarrier remake, as the US wireless outfit picked up 1.1 million customers in Q2 2013 and saw a major boost in revenue. It also managed to keep postpaid churn (turnover of customers on contract) to its lowest level ever at 1.58 percent. The carrier said the numbers were helped by its Jump upgrade program and Simple Choice family plans, launched just last month. Despite a recent price bump in the iPhone, T-Mob said the model accounted for 29 percent of its handset sales, but added that other models, like Samsung’s Galaxy S 4, also moved well. In all, it sold 4.3 million total smartphones, making up 86 percent of total phone sales — up from 71 percent over last quarter.

Meanwhile, its 4G LTE network has rolled out to 116 metro areas so far, a more rapid pace than it promised, and now covers 157 million people. That was helped along with the rapid transition of freshly acquired MetroPCS, which T-Mobile said would expand to 15 new markets. It’ll get a further boost from its US Cellular spectrum acquisition, expected to be completed soon. The result of all that was a 20 percent boost in revenue to $6.3 billion over $4.4 billion last year, albeit with a year-over-year drop in net income from $207 million to a loss of $16 million. Still if T-Mobile keeps up its highly energetic marketing and new program additions, it should get back in the black soon.

Filed under: Wireless, Mobile, T-Mobile

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Source: T-Mobile

After adding monthly SIM-only plans to its product line-up last week, EE’s announced a few new subscriptions that people will have access to at some point this summer. One is a shared option, which’ll allow patrons to use their plan “across phones and tablets, or with other people.” The other is a PAYG data-only option, so you’ll be able to buy gigabytes without signing up for anything long-term, and gobble them up on your tablet, laptop, MiFi device or anything else with a SIM slot. We don’t have any firm launch dates or pricing for either of these plans, but more is expected “in the coming weeks.” In other news, the number of customers on EE’s LTE network has exceeded the half a million mark, meaning around 200,000 new subscribers have come on board since April.

Filed under: Cellphones, Laptops, Tablets, Wireless, Mobile

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Right on the heels of its announcement of becoming the “UnCarrier”, T-Mobile has dropped an early update on customer count for Q1. While its full earnings won’t be announced until May 8th, it noted a net increase of 579,000 customers for the period, compared to a net loss of 349,000 in Q4 of 2012. It claims the increase was primarily due to continued focus on growing its MVNO customers base. Postpaid customer losses for Q1 are 199,000, far better than Q4’s drop of 515,000, and 510,000 in the same period last year. President and CEO John Legere is certainly looking at the bright side (and keeping his language clean this time) claiming the data represents “positive momentum and the first positive branded growth in four years.” We’ll wait until the dollars and cents are counted — and results from after its switch to no-contract plans and unsubsidized phone pricing are in — before flying the magenta victory flag.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, T-Mobile

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Source: T-Mobile