T-Mobile executive on Windows Phone 8: 'We'll get behind [it]'

The HTC 8X will be coming to T-Mobile when Windows Phone 8 launches.

Last week, shortly before rumors began swirling of T-Mobile and MetroPCS's planned merger (which were later confirmed), I had the opportunity to sit down with T-Mobile executives at a corporate event in Dallas.

T-Mobile executives stopped in Dallas as part of a nine-city tour across the country to celebrate the company's 10th anniversary as well as the upcoming launch of its "challenger strategy." That strategy is T-Mobile's effort to challenge rivals Verizon, AT&T and Sprint in the LTE market. The company is creating an LTE network that will reach the majority of top-50 markets by 2014.

At that event, I asked Andrew Sherrard, T-Mobile's interim chief marketing officer, about T-Mobile's thoughts on Windows Phone. This was his response:

We’ve got a lot of Windows Phone; we’ve done a ton of work with Windows Phone. We’ll be launching Windows Phone 8 when that comes out around November – we’ll have the HTC 8X.

Windows [Phone] has a nice place to live in the ecosystem. I think Google and Android is a bit more of a do-it-yourself kind of thing, whereas iPhone is a bit more locked down – it’s one way, it’s Apple’s vision of what a mobile phone should be. What I think Windows does a nice job of is giving you a personalized phone. You can put your tiles in there, get live updates and what you need. It’s a really nice compliment [to what Android and iOS offer].

That UI is significantly different and, I think, a direct advantage for [Microsoft]. We’ll push that hard. We’ll get behind Windows [Phone]. We have a space in our store for them, and we think it’s important that the mobile space have multiple ecosystems.

Image via HTC