You might have read somewhere online that Deutche Telekom AG, the T-Mobile parent company, was taking pre-orders for the brand new Apple iPhone 5. At the same time you were likely hoping to see the iPhone 5 available in the United States shortly after that news broke online. Well, news that was announced Tuesday says that T-Mobile USA is not likely going to be getting the new iPhone, this year. In fact, T-Mobile’s Chief Marketing Officer, Cole Brodman said, “We are not going to get the iPhone 5 this year,” so that should make things quite clear.
Throughout this whole year it was obvious that each carrier was waiting to find out if they were going to get lucky enough to sell the Holy Grail of smartphones, but the customers were way more interested to say the least. The Apple iPhone is one of the best selling smartphones of all time and each year they add a new version. With all the talk about the new iPhone 5 coming this year, consumers have been fidgeting at the thought of having to change carriers just to get their hands on one. Brodman did not say when they would get a shot at the phone, but it could be early 2012 or T-Mobile might be in line for the iPhone 4S instead, that is all up in the air at this point.
Analysts have brought up the idea of Apple releasing the iPhone 5 along with a much cheaper pre-paid version of the iPhone 4, or iPhone 4S or the iPhone 4 Plus. It doesn’t matter what name you put after iPhone, you know that customers will flock to where ever it may be sold. Right now, after all the news from this year, it appears that Apple is shooting for a mid October release date, which is a couple of months later than the normal summertime releases from the past.
Even with the news announced yesterday, that doesn’t mean that T-Mobile will ever see the iPhone in any version. Trying to put a business plan together with having a hot seller like the iPhone on the list is not going to be easy for T-Mobile to figure out short or long term. Of course, if the AT&T/T-Mobile merger goes through, the iPhone will be available to existing T-Mobile customers by default since AT&T already has it.
