CES 2014 Live: T-Mobile CEO, booted from AT&T party, needles host
T-Mobile loves to pick on AT&T.
T-Mobile Chief Executive John Legere, who crashed and was kicked out of an AT&T party Monday, took the stage at the Venetian on Wednesday with some choice words for the rival carrier.
In an appearance laced with language too colorful to print here, Legere explained his party-crashing by saying, “I just love Macklemore” -- AT&T’s guest performer that night.
He added that AT&T is “a continual source of amusement to me.”
“These are fat cats that can’t move.”
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Dressed in a hot pink T-Mobile T-shirt and clutching a can of Red Bull, Legere also took aim at the wireless landscape as a whole.
“This industry blows. It needs change,” he said.
T-Mobile has been aggressively working to uproot wireless plans, last year announcing that it would get rid of contracts and phone subsidies.
Those efforts have so far been working, and T-Mobile has eaten into AT&T’s market share.
At Wednesday’s event, the No. 4 carrier took another big step, announcing that it would pay the early termination fees for customers who break their wireless contracts to join T-Mobile.
Stay tuned for an AT&T response.
The fighting words came as CES rolled into its second day -- actually the fourth if you count the two days of media previews -- and the quest continues for the next big thing to change the world.
So far, not much has really stood out, unless you count film director Michael Bay’s meltdown on stage or T-Mobile’s Legere crashing AT&T’s party.
Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer trumpeted several new initiatives in a keynote address Tuesday night: a new smartphone app, digital magazines and targeted ads on its Tumblr blogging site. But critics noted that she failed to address Yahoo’s recent email failures, considered by some a black mark on her tenure at the search giant.
Also at CES, TV makers have announced bigger and clearer screens, such as the 120-inch ultra HD TV, but for the most part there haven’t been any of the startling breakthroughs that the consumer electronics show is known for. Think videocassettes, Blu-ray and satellite TV.
More of the gee-whiz stuff is coming out of the unofficial Las Vegas auto show that some say CES is becoming. A number of automakers are at CES showcasing driverless cars, interconnected autos and talking jalopies.
More updates from CES 2014 to come.
