A series of articles have come to my attention lately all of which capitalize on T-Mobile’s second quarter earnings and how the company’s fortune may finally be looking up. Credit can be attributed to a number of factors including T-Mobile’s outspoken CEO John Legere, the new Simple Choice rate plans, the release of the iPhone etc.
As Roger Etner from Fierce Wireless points out, the make-up of the wireless industry changed in the second quarter, at least on some small-scale. The nation’s “largest” regional carriers are now fully owned or in the process of being purchased by the nations largest carriers. Sprint is now owned by a foreign body in SoftBank, as are T-Mobile and TracFone. This foreign money is coming into the US wireless market and foreign expect a positive return. Only US Cellular stands alone as the largest regional carrier and even then, how long can they stay independent? As for T-Mobile, Etner echoes the thoughts of many industry watchers:
As T-Mobile has impressively shown this quarter, the industry presents opportunities to gain market share even by companies that have been on a path to implosion. As for T-Mobile’s CEO, one Reuters article points out the thoughts that are also being echoed around the industry…being outspoken is working.
CEOs are normally very reserved, but Legere is out there bragging about T-Mobile USA’s performance and bashing his competitors – and it’s working,” said one credit strategist. “He’s really backing it up with a very impressive turnaround.”
Legere isn’t shy about what’s working either:
“By fixing the things that drive them mad, like contracts and upgrades, and freeing them from the two-year sentences imposed on them by our competitors, they are choosing the new T-Mobile in unprecedented numbers,” said Legere in a press release.
Time will tell if T-Mobile can stay an industry darling after years of being written off as an underdog that was simply floundering against the likes of AT&T, Verizon and even Sprint. Now, industry watchers and tech pundits alike are looking at T-Mobile with new eyes and we’re just hopeful that the halo over Bellevue will last for a very long time.