T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert recalls the first time T-Mobile was able to offer its customers the iPhone.
For those of you who weren’t born or were toddlers in 2007 when the late Steve Jobs gave the world its first look at the iPhone, you might not know it but the device was at first an AT&T exclusive in the U.S. On February 3, 2011, Verizon started accepting pre-orders for the iPhone 4. Eight months later, Sprint broke its single-day sales record as it started selling the iPhone. And that left T-Mobile. At the time, T-Mobile was nothing like the fast-growing innovative company it is now.T-Mobile CEO Sievert has seen the carrier go from a distant fourth to a close second among U.S. wireless carriers
In a blog written by current T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert, the executive recalls, « When I joined T-Mobile in 2012 as chief marketing officer, we were a distant fourth in wireless with limited financial resources to improve our network. At the time, we didn’t have 4G LTE — and we certainly didn’t offer iPhones. » There were some unlocked iPhone units on T-Mobile’s network but the user experience was not what iPhone users wanted. « We heard loud and clear that we needed to better meet our customers’ needs — and we accepted the challenge, » Sievert wrote. When the carrier first started to sell the iPhone in April 2013.
