Though it doesn't appear T-Mobile USA will be changing its market share position in the near term, it appears to be doing a good job on the churn front.
It added 951,000 net new customers added in the fourth quarter of 2007, up from 901,000 in the fourth quarter of 2006. That's important because "net" adds are what one has left after deducting the customers who churned away in any given time period. The other data point is that, in its most-recent quarter, T-Mobile's churn dropped to 1.8 percent, down from 2.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006.'
That is notable because T-Mobile has a large percentage of contracts that are of the one-year variey, not the the two-year contracts that increasingly are the norm in the postpaid segment of the market. It also is notable because there is some evidence T-Mobile customers are more active than customers of some of the other leading mobile carriers in investigating alternatives.
"T-Mobile customers are the most active in checking out competitive products and services," says Compete.com analyst Jeff Hull.
"This is partly because they are a younger, more active subscriber base, and partly because of the legacy of one-year contracts at T-Mobile," says Hull.
"If you look at an upstart like Helio, four percent of their site traffic is from existing T-Mobile customers, with two percent from both AT&T and Verizon Wireless, and Sprint/Nextel customers seemingly uninterested in checking out the MVNO."
T-Mobile customers also are over-represented at the Boost Mobile site, another youth oriented brand that is successfully attracting T-Mobile user interest. At the margin, and it might only be at the margin, there does seem to be a difference between customer bases at T-Mobile and Sprint or Nextel, for example.
Given the apparent high "shopping" and "comparison" behavior, the lower churn is an accomplishment.
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