![\"t-mo-line\"](\"http:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/04\/t-mo-line.jpeg?w=100&h=70&crop=1\")
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T-Mobile is kicking off its official sales of the iPhone 5 today, marking the first time the U.S.’ fourth largest carrier has offered an Apple smartphone. Thanks to T-Mo’s new Uncarrier plans<\/a>, the iPhone 5 can be had starting at just $99, with two years of $20\u00a0monthly\u00a0payments to cover the balance, or for free if you’re switching from another carrier and bring a device in for trade. So far, so good, according to reports of lines forming at retail stores for a phone that’s now over six months old.<\/p>\n BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk tweeted the photo<\/a>\u00a0above of a line at a location this morning, and reports on Twitter <\/a>suggest that small lines are forming at various locations around the U.S. Our own intern Michael Seo said there was a small one outside the T-Mobile store near our New York offices when he came into work this morning.<\/p>\n The appetite for the T-Mobile iPhone is good news for both Apple and the small carrier. T-Mobile’s\u00a0existing\u00a0potential reach only represents around 26.1 million total additional subscribers for Apple (a smaller percentage of which are realistically potential iPhone 5 buyers). That’s not a huge number in global subscriber terms, but it does give Apple room to expand its smartphone dominance in the U.S.<\/a>, and could provide it a late-stage bump for the iPhone 5, which is going to face increasing pressure from new competing flagship devices like the Samsung Galaxy S4.<\/p>\n T-Mobile has\u00a0consistently\u00a0been left out of launch day hype surrounding the release of Apple’s iPhone, with the carrier relegated to watching from the sidelines as AT&T, Sprint and Verizon locations saw customers queue for the iPhone 5 back in September, so it’s probably very happy to see lines form with this launch. Combined, the iPhone 5 and the carrier’s new model could lure away quite a few switchers, but we’ll have to wait and see if that impacts the overall distribution of U.S. wireless customers in any significant way.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n T-Mobile is kicking off its official sales of the iPhone 5 today, marking the first time the U.S.’ fourth largest carrier has offered an Apple smartphone. Thanks to T-Mo’s new Uncarrier plans, the iPhone 5 can be had starting at just $99, with two years of $20\u00a0monthly\u00a0payments to cover the balance, or for free if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6449,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6449"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n<\/img><\/a>
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