Image via Re/code
T-Mobile CEO John Legere said tonight during a talk at Re/code’s Code/Mobile conference that demand for the iPhone 6 Plus was higher than was originally anticipated, with the larger model grabbing about 45% of orders. He said initial expectations put demand somewhere in the ballpark of 20-25% (Video below)
This unexpected level of demand may have contributed to the supply problems many customers have experienced, and Legere says it will still be a while before iPhone shipments are able to meet demand again.
Legere also said that only about 100,000 people took advantage of the carrier’s ‘test drive’ offer that allowed customers to use an iPhone on T-Mobile for a week completely free of charge. He took a chance to reiterate the points made during his recent Apple SIM tweet storm as well.
Specifically he mentioned how AT&T will lock the card to its own network and Verizon refused to participate in the program at all . He also had harsh words for carriers that don’t have the iPhone: if your network doesn’t have Apple’s smartphone, you should “crawl on your knees” and “do whatever you have to” to get it, because if you don’t, your carrier “is sh*t.”
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I love this guy!
x2 – He’s such a non-typical, non-traditional CEO – and even if it is all BS – It’s still fun to watch and see how he’s for pulling back the covers on AT&T and Verizon. Is T-Mobile a crappy network; well, in my area, yes. But he’s giving me hope that when T-Mobile scores some lower frequencies next year – they may be a player!
If that happens – both of our iPhones were purchased off-contract so we can jump ship and join up with “Mad John”
This coming from the network that got the iPhone LAST…
Remember when you were bleeding 600,000+ customers a quarter, because you didn’t have the iPhone, and you refused to get the iPhone??? Now they are coming in droves because you HAVE the iPhone (and you are cheapest), but not because of the network…
“He also had harsh words for carriers that don’t have the iPhone: if your network doesn’t have Apple’s smartphone, you should “crawl on your knees” and “do whatever you have to” to get it, because if you don’t, your carrier “is sh*t.””
John understood the importance of having the iPhone when he became CEO and that’s why he started working on getting it when he came onboard. As for the network, in my area T-Mobile is actually faster than AT&T. I get download speeds on LTE that are around 60-70Mbits/s off-peak hours and 10-20Mbits/s on peak hours, all of this made possible by a 20MHz+20MHz bandwidth on AWS LTE. My friends on AT&T get only 5MHz. So far the only advantage to AT&T is the low frequency = better in building signal. That will change in the next year or so.
Love this guy too, I love AT&T