A $5 iPhone 6s From T-Mobile

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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At some point the four largest cellphone carriers will start to lose money on their Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone 6s sales. For T-Mobile US Inc. (NYSE: TMUS) that day may have already come. It offers an iPhone 6s for $5 a month.

The deal does demand a trade-in, which can include earlier versions of the iPhone and some Samsung products. After the trade in, the offer gets even better:

Starting 9/25, you can switch to the latest iPhone for $0 upfront and just $5 per month with JUMP! On Demand. Plus, upgrade your phone up to three times per year with no waiting period or upgrade fees.

Zero upfront. Zero waiting. It’s the perfect way to upgrade to the latest and greatest iPhone

The iPhone 6s has 16GB, and the customer does need to sign for an 18-month carrier plan.

The smartphone prices wars, which include ever more favorable carrier fees, are not new. The level of aggressiveness is. The market share advantages of adding new customers may last for years, if those customers remain loyal. With each new and aggressive plan, customer loyalty may erode. T-Mobile has a great deal at stake. It claims it can take share from market leaders AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ). It will have to do so to be a financial success.

So far, Wall Street favors the T-Mobile approach. The company’s stock trades near a 52-week high at $43, against a range for the period from $24.26 to $43.43. By contrast, the other carrier that trails Verizon and AT&T by a great deal, Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S), trades toward the lower end of its range, at $4.34 against a 52-week spread of $3.10 to $6.78.

While customers enjoy all the benefits, investors may not. Giving things away, even in great numbers, may be the downfall of T-Mobile yet.

ALSO READ: Oppenheimer Says Buy 4 Top Internet Stocks on Any Market Weakness

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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