T-Mobile releases Q4 subscriber stats from 2008

It’s no secret that 2008 wasn’t kind to most major corporations around the world. Unfortunately, as the year-end reports have been trickling in over the last couple of days, we’ve gotten a healthy look at just how bad many of our favorites fared. While T-Mobile has yet to release their actual financials, we’ll have to wait until the 27th of February for that pleasure, the company has gone ahead and released its subscriber stats for the 4th Quarter of 2008. During Q4 the company added 621,000 new customers. Progress is something, but compare this to the 671,000 added during Q3 2008, as well as the whopping 951,000 added during Q4 2007, and the picture gets a bit more bleak. New contract additions were up 43%, compared to 44% in Q3 and 77% in Q4 2007. Blended churn was up just a bit at 3.3% compared to 3% in Q3 and 2.8% in Q4 2007, but it looks like the company is doing a decent job retaining its meager customer base. At the end of the day, we can probably chalk much of this up to the economy at large, but it’s still a bit disheartening to read yet another example of our financial woes. On the other hand, T-mobile seems relatively optimistic about their prospects in the coming year, given plans for an increased 3G footprint, coupled with a lower-than-average pricing and new device introductions. We’re not so sure this is terribly realistic, but we’ve got a whole year ahead for them to prove us wrong.

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