T-Mobile USA Lost 557,000 Subscribers in Q2, Gained Prepaid Customers

It's gotta hurt being the only major U.S. carrier without the iPhone, and the proof of this dilemma is certainly being shown in T-Mobile USA's second-quarter, during which time more than half a million subscribers jumped ship for greener pastures.

T-Mobile USA has announced second-quarter 2012 financial results and it's a good news/bad news kind of scenario -- but no matter how you slice it, it's gotta stink to be the only major U.S. carrier without the iPhone.

The bad news is the company shed 557,000 customers on the more lucrative postpaid (contract) plans. That pales dramatically in comparison to the 187,000 new customers the carrier added in the first quarter, and it's almost four times the number of postpaid customers it lost in Q2 2011.

The only bright spot in this grim news is that the company gained back 227,000 customers on the prepaid side of the business, which undoubtedly includes a fair number of unlocked iPhones, despite those users being stuck on slower 2G EDGE data speeds.

All in all, T-Mobile USA's Q2 net income is actually up 3.5 percent over the previous quarter, although the number dipped by 2.4 percent from the same quarter last year. Deducting the prepaid gains from the postpaid losses, the company would up with a net loss of only 205,000 customers.

The better news for T-Mobile customers is the company's 4G LTE plans are marching onward, and should roll out next year. The magenta carrier also plans to add prepaid service at 8,700 more third-party stores during Q3, so the company clearly hopes to capitalize on its popularity as a GSM safe haven from AT&T.

Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter

 

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Wednesday Recap: Seagate Hearts LaCie, HP Slashing 27,000 Jobs, DigiTimes Rumors

Krikey, what a day for the tech world! On top of the jury siding with Google over the Oracle lawsuit, we’ve got Seagate buying up LaCie, HP slashing eight percent of its workforce over the next two years and Apple CEO Tim Cook failing to cut a deal with Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung over their long-standing patent dispute. Oh, and DigiTimes says they’ll work harder to make Apple rumors more accurate. Yes, seriously. Read on to check out all the news for Wednesday, May 23, 2012!

Seagate Plans to Acquire Controlling Interest in LaCie

One would think with all of the hard drives in the world, the market would be strong, but the announcement today that Seagate intends to acquire controlling interest of LaCie certainly gives one pause. The storage titan has offered to purchase LaCie CEO Philippe Spruch’s 64.5 percent ownership, which pins the value of the deal at $186 million USD. Spruch plans to join Seagate and lead the company’s consumer product division when the deal closes.

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BlackBerry App World Hits 70,000 Applications

- Alert) hub for application distribution for BlackBerry devices, reached a new milestone as of late as the service now plays host to more than 70,000 apps.

The three-year-old App World has reached two billion cumulative app downloads, with six million downloads per day and 177 million app downloads every month. RIM’s Developer Relations team revealed the latest figures at a HTML5 hackathon, which was held at Pace University in New York City.

This means there has been a significant bump in the number of apps in App World since last month, when the company revealed that there were more than 60,000 apps available through the service. The number of daily app downloads has also risen from 174 million.

The sharp uptick in the number of apps on the store can be partly attributed to a program RIM announced in February. The company offered a free 16GB BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to eligible developers who converted an Android (News - Alert) app for use on the tablet and submitted it to App World within a certain time period.

This initiative generated more than 1,500 app submissions, with more than 6,600 new developers becoming BlackBerry (News

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