In 2012 T-Mobile USA was the distant 4th place player in the U.S. wireless market and was bleeding subscribers and revenue. Today the company is the fastest growing in the industry and has moved into 2nd place, closing quickly on Verizon. The company’s market cap has increased from around $3B at the beginning of 2012 to about $180B at the beginning of 2023. What changed?
A lot of things changed at T-Mobile starting in 2012, but taken as a whole, those changes tell the story of a category creator. In the article linked below I break the story down into five important steps:
- Understand how the world is changing.
- Identify the potential compelling story.
- Define the category.
- Launch the category.
- Sustain category momentum and leadership.
In 2012, T-Mobile wasn’t the only wireless carrier struggling to pull out of a steep dive. At the time I was vice president of corporate strategy at Sprint which was the #3 player in the market. We similarly were falling farther and farther behind Verizon and AT&T. Our stock price had taken a similar beating. At Sprint we did some things right, but we failed to follow the category-creator roadmap, and as a result, after I left the company, I watched T-Mobile catch and pass Sprint and eventually acquire my former employer. In this article as we move through the steps that T-Mobile took, in the article I point out where Sprint made right steps, stumbled, or skipped steps altogether.