Diverse Insights

It’s amazing how few iphones you see in the hands of black youth. You would think this device, that has been marketed as the device that would change the world, would have been embraced by youth from Harlem to the South Side of Chicago, but this has yet to happen. To understand why, you must take a closer look at the buying habits of these communities and from there you’ll be able to understand the reasons why.

When Apple decided to sign an exclusive deal with AT&T to distribute their phones, they must not have realized that AT&T, much like Verizon, is not the preferred carrier of choice in the hood. T-Mobile is by far the leader in these communities. In the mid-nineties, Voicestream, was the first company to offer pay as you go, plans for those that didn’t have the credit to get a cellular phone any other way. This immediately opened up cellular communication to a segment of society that was being kept out of the conversation due to a lack of resources. By offering this service, they opened up cellular communication to a group that couldn’t go and get their parents credit card to open up a cell phone account. When Deutche Telekom acquired Voicestream in September of 2002 for 24 billion dollars, they continued to target the youth market and compete heavily on pricing and convenience. Under the brand name of T-Mobile in the states, they continued their focus on youth markets. They found innovative ways beyond pricing to attract customers from this segment of society. They were the first U.S. carrier to launch a ringback tones service, nationally, CallerTunes, video messaging and “HiFi Ringers” (ringtones which are clips of an actual song).

These advances have given T-mobile a lead in the mobile space amongst the trend setting segment of the urban community. If you want to target this segment via the mobile platform, T-Mobile has an advantage over AT&T in pricing, features and convenience. Apple should have thought this one through before they signed an exclusive deal with the pricey, less ubiquitous AT&T.

Diverse Insights
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