T-Mobile US (NYSE:TMUS) is planning to lure subscribers away from the competition with the promise of a year's worth of video streaming service Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) with the purchase of a new Samsung Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge.
In a tweet yesterday, T-Mobile CEO John Legere said that consumers who buy the new Samsung S6 or S6 Edge smartphones from T-Mobile will get a free year of Netflix. More details on the offer are expected to come later this week, according to a T-Mobile spokesperson.
Notably, T-Mobile is just offering to pay for the Netflix service and not offering customers a deal on the data that would be used to deliver Netflix wirelessly to the Samsung device. The company does offer Music Freedom, a service that it introduced last June, which subsidizes a subscribers' data costs for a number of streaming music apps. However, since video is a much greater bandwidth hog than music, T-Mobile is not making the same offer. Nevertheless, the operator is likely hoping that by tying its offer to Netflix it will stand apart from its competitors.
T-Mobile, along with competitors Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ), AT&T Mobility, (NYSE: T), Sprint (NYSE: S) and U.S. Cellular (NYSE:USM), plans to offer the Galaxy S6 to consumers. Samsung has said that the devices will be available for preorder Friday, March 27 and be available in retail stores April 10. That's the same day that HTC's One M9 also goes on sale and the day that Apple begins taking preorders for its Apple Watch.
Neither Samsung nor its carrier partners have revealed exact pricing for the device. However, Young-hee Lee, Samsung's head of mobile marketing, told the Wall Street Journal on March 1 that the Galaxy S6 Edge will retail for about $100 more than the Galaxy S6, and will be "in the same price bracket" as the Galaxy S5. The Galaxy S5 sold in the U.S. for about $200 with a two-year contract.
For more:
- see this AdAge article
- see this BGR article
- see this tweet
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