A few weeks ago, T-Mobile announced three separate days of offers. First was a new Simple Starter $40 plan, next were tablets discounted from their full price, down to match pricing for non-LTE devices. iPad Air, for instance, started at just $498 for a 16GB LTE model, Galaxy Tab 3 was just $199. Promotional pricing was as below:
Now, pricing is very much back to normal. If you head on over to the T-Mobile online store’s tablet section, the iPad Air is back up to $600 ($25 x 24) for the 16GB model and the iPad mini starts from $504. Nexus 7 is no longer sold, having strangely vanished from T-Mo’s online inventory a week or so back, as has the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1. The latter – presumably – has gone to make way for the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 coming in June. One piece of good news: The Galaxy Tab 3 remains at the low $199 pricing.
With the pricing having gone back up, it’s fair to say this definitely wasn’t an official Un-carrier move. In interviews, press releases and blogs, T-Mo is keen to stress that Un-carrier phases are not short-term promotions, and are here to stay with the intent of changing the industry. This latest tablet promo clearly doesn’t fit in to those conditions, and has ended. It was an effort to get more customers buying tablets. Nothing more.
Update: So, the iPad has gone up in price but it’s not quite full Apple retail cost. Apple – for instance – sells the 16GB iPad Air with LTE for $629. T-Mo, therefore, is $30 cheaper, just not quite the $498 price we’d seen before today. Also worth noting, that the offer to get the free data is still running until the end of this year. It’s just the iPad pricing that’s changed.
Source: T-Mobile