The competition with AT&T and Verizon also hit T-Mobile at the start of the current year. The mobile operator’s sales fell surprisingly significantly in the first quarter by 2.4 percent to 19.63 percent, the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary announced on Thursday. At 538,000, the increase in customers was also lower than expected. In the previous quarter, the number of users had increased almost twice as much.
Still, the company raised its full-year targets for customer growth. It now expects an increase of 5.3 to 5.7 instead of five to 5.5 million. T-Mobile, in which Telekom now holds the majority, was the growth driver for the Bonn-based group last year. The US division contributed around two-thirds of sales and operating profit to consolidated earnings. However, by the end of the year it had to accept a first drop in sales.