T-Mobile’s extravagant and highly boisterous CEO John Legere on Monday made an appearance on stage during Re/code‘s Code/Mobile conference, where he talked about various T-Mobile-related things including the carrier’s financial results for the last quarter, the “Uncarrier” strategy and how competitors deal with it, but also the iPhone, and specifically the iPhone 6.
FROM EARLIER: What if Apple fixed one of the iPhone 6’s biggest disappointments?
Legere revealed that when he took over the reins of T-Mobile two years ago, his marching orders were to “get on your knees, crawl over there” to get the iPhone — previously, T-Mobile was the only major mobile operator in the U.S. not to officially carry the iPhone. “Seriously, your store without the iPhone in it is s—,” he said, revealing he was willing to do whatever was needed to ink a deal with Apple.
The move really paid off for the company, and Legere revealed that currently, 20% of the company’s smartphone base is made of iPhones. And that number can go even higher.
Unsurprisingly, the iPhone 6 is quite popular with T-Mobile customers, with Legere revealing that demand for the bigger iPhone 6 Plus version has been very surprising. According to the carrier, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus sales were roughly equal at some point, something no one at T-Mobile anticipated.
Legere also talked about T-Mobile’s iPhone free trial promotion, revealing the carrier offered about a million iPhones to interested customers, but said that it only added “tens of thousands” of subscribers following the move.
The full Legere interview from Code/Mobile, which is worth taking a look at, follows below.
