Along with its new iPhone Forever program, Sprint today announced some pretty big news regarding its contract offerings.
Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure has revealed that his carrier will ditch two-year contracts for all of its smartphones by the end of 2015. When that happens, Sprint customers that want to buy a new phone from their carrier will either have to use one of Sprint’s leasing plans — Sprint Lease or Sprint Easy Pay — or they’ll have to buy their phone outright. Claure says that 51 percent of Sprint customers that bought a new phone last quarter did so with a lease.
While the US cellphone industry was all about two-year contracts for a long time, it’s steadily been moving away from them in recent years. T-Mobile kicked it all off with its Equipment Installment Plans and Simple Choice, and earlier this month Verizon announced that it was killing contracts, too. AT&T and Sprint still offer contract options, but they focus heavily on their leasing options and keep the contracts hidden away. Now that Sprint has announced that it’s moving away from contracts completely, it’ll be interesting to see when AT&T decides to end ‘em, too.