T-Mobile USA has just announced its plans to team up with Target, who will begin to push the Magenta carrier’s products and services. By the end of this year, Target will be opening their T-Mobile mobile centers in 850 stores, and will open the mobile centers in the majority of stores by mid 2011.
We’re not sure what to think of this, really, but we can’t imagine it’s necessarily a bad thing. T-Mobile is the US’ fourth largest carrier, so spreading themselves into Target stores will likely help, even if it’s with the impulse buyers. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to a Target, but it’s interesting to see the store going the way of Best Buy Mobile. We’re curious to see if Target will stay with T-Mobile exclusively, or if they will start picking up other carriers along the way. I think it’s a smart idea for both companies, as each of them get access to market that they weren’t previously plugged in to.
While T-Mobile is the smallest of the major carriers in the US, they’ve earned more customer satisfaction awards than any other carrier in the country. They’ve repeatedly been awarded for their amazing customer service, but that could be due to the fact that they don’t have the sheer volume of customers that other carriers are faced with. Magenta is also one of the cheaper carriers you can find, offering flexible plans, and even allow customers to finance their phones if eligible. Let’s hope all the services remain intact with the Target Mobile stores as well.
If done right, T-Mobile may indeed see an uptick of customer sign ups. That’s really a long shot, but the partnership between the two companies will likely do nothing but good for them both. T-Mobile needs to grow their US market share significantly, or risked being completely overshadowed by the Big Three, which all have or are working on next-generation wireless network technologies. T-Mobile has stated that their HSPA+ network should hold them over until they bring LTE online much further down the road than either AT&T or Verizon have planned.
So what do you think of the new partnership? Do you think this is a good idea, or possibly one of the carrier’s desperate attempts to gain US market share?
[Via: AndroidSpin, Facebook]