Anticipation is high for the upcoming launch of Samsung's Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge smartphones, which are scheduled to hit stores April 10, with most major operators taking preorders for the devices starting today. To try to steal customers away from the competition, operators T-Mobile (NYSE:TMUS) and Sprint (NYSE: S) are getting creative with their Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge deals.
Sprint, for example, is hoping to lure customers on price. The company is letting new and existing customers lease the 32 GB Galaxy S6 with the Sprint $80-a-month Unlimited Plus plan free of charge, but after a $20-a-month credit and with a 24-month lease. If customers want the 64 GB version, they just have to add on $5 a month extra, and for the 128 GB version they have to add an additional $10 a month.
Sprint is also offering the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge with a 24-month lease for $5 after a $20-a-month lease credit. When combined with the Unlimited Plus $80-a-month plan, that's a total of $85 a month. The carrier is also letting families get in the game with its Sprint Family Share Plus Plan, which enables a family to lease four Samsung Galaxy S 6 smartphones with unlimited talk and text and 20GB of shared data for $200 a month.
T-Mobile US (NYSE:TMUS), meanwhile, is taking a different tack. The company's CEO, John Legere, tweeted earlier this week that T-Mobile is going to bundle in a year's worth of video-streaming service Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) with the purchase of a new Samsung Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge.
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 subscriber's 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.
AT&T (NYSE: T), meanwhile, is offering the S6 32 GB smartphone to postpaid customers for $199 with a two-year contract, which is similar to Verizon Wireless' (NYSE: VZ) rate plan of $199 with a two-year contract, except Verizon also requires a $50 mail-in rebate card.
For consumers who want the no-contract option, the Galaxy S6 also comes at a variety of price points. Sprint MVNO Boost Mobile is offering the Galaxy S6 in the 32 GB version for $649.99. Meanwhile, Verizon is charging a full-retail rate of $599.99 for the 32 GB version of the Galaxy S6 and $699.99 for the 32 GB version of the S6 Edge.
For more:
- see this Re/code article
- see this PC Mag article
- see this Sprint press release
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