Cricket Wireless, the US prepaid provider has publically announced that they are not prepared to settle for their current market share and instead will be aggressively targeting the retail sector in the future. Over the last few months Cricket has revitalised its prepaid plans. For instance, back in May Cricket began offering unlimited deals starting from as low as $35. More recently, Cricket announced they were doubling the amount of data offered to all customers on their Basic, Pro and Smart Plans. Not to mention that Cricket are also running a specifically targeting T-Mobile promotion offering T-Mobile customers $100 credit to switch to Cricket. It is not just the plans Cricket are targeting either with the recent announcement by Cricket that they will be one of the first companies to launch the HTC Desire 510, which is one of HTC’s most competitively priced mid-range smartphones. Cricket are expected to launch the HTC Desire 510 on September 19th for only $149.99 on their network.
Cricket’s aggressive fight for customers all began back in July 2013 when AT&T purchased Cricket’s parent company, Leap Wireless. Since then AT&T merged Cricket with their own MVNO, aio Wireless allowing the Cricket brand to totally absorb aio Wireless. This merger happened back in July of this year and since then Cricket has tried hard to revamp their business structure as a whole by introducing a new tagline, the new price plans and revamping its 3000 outlets. In addition to the revamp of the business in general Cricket also recently announced its partnership with GameStop to sell its phones. This GameStop partnership in particular is where Cricket President Jennifer Van Buskirk sees a real opportunity for the prepaid provided.
GameStop is essentially a buy/sell/trade games shop which allows customers to bring in their unwanted games, consoles (and a small selection of electronics including phones and tablets) to trade-in or sell. Buskirk sees this as a great opportunity for Cricket to establish themselves in a market with a high number of young, tech-savvy customers. Buskirk believes this partnership will allow customers the ability to sell their old phones or gaming systems and use the funds to purchase a Cricket smartphone. What makes this partnership extremely beneficial to Cricket is this will be an exclusivity partnership meaning GameStop will not be selling competitive products from other carriers. It is presumed GameStop will still sell any used devices they buy from customers, but will not be selling any new devices in the same way they will be from Cricket. With GameStop having close to 2800 stores nationwide this will effectively almost double the outlet exposure for Cricket. With the tone of voice used by Buskirk it is unlikely this will be all Cricket has in the pipeline. According to Buskirk “We will get aggressive and fight for customers” further adding “We will do what we need to do to win customers“. So what do you think? Are Cricket doing enough to win your custom? Any of this deals or the GameStop partnership interest you? Let us know.