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Back in June, we saw signs that T-Mobile may soon be moving to 36-month installment plans for devices, up from the previous 24-month installments. At the time, some non-smartphone devices briefly showed a 36-month-long EIP before being reverted.
As of now, it appears T-Mobile has fully moved to 36-month installment plans, at least when it comes to non-phone devices.
Smartwatches and Tablets are the first ones up
As spotted on the T-Mobile website right now, pretty much every smartwatch and tablet available for sale is now offered as a 36-month installment plan.
The images below show the top devices on both the smartwatch page and the tablet page on T-Mobile’s website.
So far, the 36-month installments are only for these two categories. Will phones be next?
The future of smartphone installments at T-Mobile
When it comes to the competitors, T-Mobile has actually stood alone when it comes to having 2-year installments for a while now.
AT&T has had 36-month installments for phones since 2022, and Verizon since early 2023. T-Mobile, on the other hand, has resisted moving to 36-month installments until now.
The writing may be on the wall when it comes to phones, though. As we said in our previous coverage earlier this year, it makes sense, financially, for T-Mobile to move to longer installments. Customers who are “locked-in” with promotional monthly credits tend to stick around for that entire time since leaving would forfeit the remainder of the credits.
As for the customer, there really aren’t any huge benefits, only downsides. Typically, when someone has an installment with T-Mobile, it’s because the company has given a promo to offset the cost of the device. That means the benefit of having longer to pay off your loan, thus lower payments, doesn’t really apply too much.
Overall, we think it’s only a matter of time before new phones require a 3-year installment plan on T-Mobile. It’s an unfortunate reality of the ever-changing carrier landscape. Maybe one of T-Mobile’s competitors will “re-invent” 2-year installments soon, who knows.
Anyway, when it comes to T-Mobile, we’ll keep an eye out for the longer installments coming to phones and let you know.
