T-Mobile US took market share away from its competitors last year , according to CEO John Legere, who is on a mission to see his company become the third-largest mobile operator in the U.S. But the numbers suggest he will have to wait a little longer to overtake Sprint.
The telco added a net 2.1 million customers in the final quarter of 2014 and 8.3 million in the year as a whole, it announced on Wednesday, highlighting the fact that many of its net adds are phone customers rather than machine-to-machine connections or mobile broadband subscriptions.
"While my competitors are hiding behind less valuable connected device subscriber additions and managing profit expectations to the downside, T-Mobile delivered over 2.1 million customers in Q4, while managing the balance between growth and profitability. Needless to say, 2014 was a record breaking year," Legere said in a statement accompanying a preliminary customer numbers announcement.
Those 2.1 million new customers in Q4 included 1.04 million branded postpaid phone customers, T-Mobile said. Including branded prepaid customers and mobile broadband customers, the total came in at 1.54 million. It also added 152,000 M2M customers and 434,000 MVNO customers, taking its total net adds for the quarter to 2.13 million.
T-Mobile claims that it is continuing to take more customers from rival networks than it loses to them, "and it looks like we will continue to beat everyone on total postpaid phone adds as well," Legere said.
The telco’s rivals have yet to publish data for Q4. Verizon on Tuesday said it increased its postpaid net additions in the quarter but did not provide figures. However, it did admit to having experienced a "highly competitive quarter" that resulted in an increase in churn.
T-Mobile is still some way behind Verizon and AT&T in terms of customer numbers, but Legere last year predicted that T-Mobile would overtake closest rival Sprint by the end of 2014.
"They have been swinging the bat since I made that statement, so we won’t know where things stand until we get the final score after we both report Q4 earnings," he admitted this week.
Indeed, it will be a close run thing.
T-Mobile ended 2014 with 55.02 million customers, compared with the 55.04 million Sprint reported three months earlier. If Marcel Claure’s company continues its recent return to growth, it will hold off T-Mobile for now, but Legere is undeterred by that prospect.
"T-Mobile will – officially – become the number three wireless company in America in 2015," he said. "Whether it is now – or soon – I’m telling you, it’s a done deal!"
