If there’s one thing we know about T-Mobile CEO John Legere, it’s that he’s never afraid of a good old-fashioned price war — even with one of the biggest names in tech.
Not even a full 24 hours after Apple shook things up with a new way to buy iPhones on a monthly installment plan, T-Mobile announced a promotion of its own. At just $20 per month, it comes in about $125 less than Apple’s offer of $27 per month for just a phone. If you compare the promotion to Apple’s new upgrade plan that includes a few perks for $32.41 per month, T-Mobile’s discount is even steeper.
I’ll compare all the offer details for the 16GB model of iPhone 6s. Prices go up if you want the 6s Plus or additional storage, but it gives a good baseline.
Under the promotion T-Mobile announced on Thursday, you can buy a 16GB iPhone 6s from them for $20 per month for 18 months. At that point you can either trade it in and call it a day, or pay another $164 to keep the phone. That comes out to a total of $524.
The deal comes with T-Mobile’s standard option to upgrade your device to a newer model up the three times per year. It also comes with a new “Lifetime Coverage Guarantee,” meaning T-Mobile will unlock your phone and let you go to another carrier if you’re ever unsatisfied with your cell service.
Apple’s new pricing model, meanwhile, offers an iPhone 6s for $27 per month for 24 months, or $649 total. That will just get you the phone with no extra perks for $125 more than T-Mobile’s price.
Apple’s other new payment structure, called the iPhone Upgrade Program, offers an iPhone 6s, AppleCare+ warranty and the ability to trade in your device after one year for $32.41 per month for 24 months. That comes out to $778, or $254 more than T-Mobile’s similar offer.
No matter how you slice it, it looks like T-Mobile has won the first round of the price-cutting war, at least on the numbers. The company did say the offer is “special introductory pricing” and won’t last long, so we’ll see if T-Mobile is able to keep it up.
Phone discounts have been one of the company’s many tools to lure customers away from industry giants AT&T and Verizon over the past couple years. But Apple threatened that strategy this week when it announced lower prices than everyone, with the flexibility to choose any carrier.
Certainly, undercutting a manufacturing giant like Apple on its own devices won’t be cheap. But it looks like the Bellevue wireless carrier is going to give it a try with what it’s calling the industry’s “best upgrade program” and a “totally unprecedented price.”
“So seriously, the question is, if you’re considering the new iPhones, why wouldn’t you come and get one at T-Mobile?” Legere wrote in a Thursday blog post.