Well, here’s a story we didn’t see coming, especially not on the heels of the last T-Mobile’s COO comments regarding the iPhone last week. According to Merrill Lynch analyst Scott Craig, “speculation is heightening” that Deutsche Telekom will announce the imminent arrival of the iPhone for its company’s US unit during next week’s analyst day meetings. The meetings, scheduled for December 6th and 7th would be an unusual place for such an announcement given that Apple likes to be involved with high-profile launches. However, the iPhone’s launch on smaller, regional players has also been without the usual Apple fanfare so there is some precedence for the opposite to be true.
The arrival of the iPhone on T-Mobile would give Apple access to 98% of the nations post-paid wireless subscribers with an additional 33 million potential customers.
We’ve seen plenty of analyst statements pop up speculating on the iPhone’s arrival on T-Mobile, but few analyst comments have been so specific with a time and date. It’ll be interesting to see how this one plays out.