T-Mobile: 10% Of Departing Customers Leave For The iPhone

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T-Mobile-iPhone

During a presentation to investors in New York on Thursday, T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm put an explicit percentage on the so-called iPhone effect: how many T-Mobile subscribers leave every month for AT&T just because of Apple’s smartphone.

According to Humm, the churn rate — or number of contract customers lost per month — is sitting at 2 percent right now. Of that 2% leaving the network, a full ten percent are because customers want the iPhone.

To counter, Humm says that T-Mobile will launch a line of sub-$100 Android smartphones with subscription plans starting at just $10 a month. That doesn’t exactly sound like the plan of a company that thinks it’s going to get the iPhone any time soon, does it?

Worse, it reeks of desperation: you can’t retain customers you’re losing for lack of the best handset on Earth by offering them a cheap deal on some of the crummiest.

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