Trump Mobile traces its origins back to a Mexican middleweight boxer

Where is Trump’s phone? We will continue to talk about it every week. Last week, we spoke to executives from the company for the first time, and we’re back this week with more details about how it all started.

The “Trump Mobile” may bear the name of the American president, but he did not come up with the idea, and neither did any Trump. In fact, it was executives at MVNO Liberty Mobile who approached the Trump family with a pitch for the company, and this wasn’t their first rodeo; Five years ago, Liberty Mobile tested the same playbook with world champion boxer Canelo Alvarez.

That’s according to Don Hendrickson and Eric Thomas, the Trump Mobile executives I spoke to last week, when He gave me a first look What they said was a semi-final version of the T1 phone. Or as Hendrickson repeatedly said, when they decided to “open up the kimono” for me and reveal more about how the company worked.

Hendrickson did previously claimed To come up with the initial idea for Trump Mobile. He spoke with me last week and didn’t take full credit, but said the idea stemmed from conversations with the marketing team at Liberty Mobile — the MVNO owned by Hendrickson, Thomas, and fellow Trump Mobile executive Pat O’Brien. However, it was Hendrickson who successfully pitched the idea to the Trump Organization.

“I got on a plane and went to Florida,” he told me. “I met with Eric Trump and his team and said, ‘This is what we want to do. This is what we think we can do, and this is how we think we can help the American people.'”

What I didn’t realize before talking to Hendrickson is that they’ve tried this before. Only this time, it was with boxer Canelo Alvarez. “We had a Canelo Mobile program with him that was aimed at serving Mexican Americans here in the United States, and we were looking to do something along those lines,” Hendrickson said.

Canelo Mobile launched in May 2020 with familiar promises: broad cellular coverage, perks like free international calls and roadside assistance (from Drive America, the same service included in Trump’s plan), and affordable Android phones, all backed by the presence of a famous name.

Canelo Mobile launched with two phones, called The Legend and The Champ, and a third phone, The Contender, was eventually added. She made little effort to hide what she really was: the phones she made Hot peppera budget brand that provides devices to budget MVNO operators including Visible and Metro, along with the federal toll-free phone program Lifeline. There’s not even a Canelo logo on the device, with Hotpepper’s signature chili pepper logo instead. I reached out to Hotpepper for comment, but the support email on its website bounced.

Canelo Mobile has done a better job of branding its accessories. It has sold at least two separate pairs of Alvarez-branded over-ear headphones, and at different times has sold various phone packages advertising Bluetooth speakers, earbuds, baseball caps, key chains, and more.

The phones were already differentiated by their software, which supposedly included a selection of Canelo apps pre-installed. These include the money-sending app Broxel, which remains one of the boxer’s sponsors, along with Alvarez’s I Can workout app, which was marketed through an Instagram account. Until last November But it appears that it is no longer available to download for Android or iOS. They were joined by CaneloRx, a platform for purchasing prescription drugs at a discount, This is a step repeated by Trump himself.

Just like Trump Mobile, every element of Canelo Mobile’s cellular service was powered by Liberty Mobile — Liberty was “secretly connected” to Trump Mobile, Hendrickson told me, even if that connection was a bit vague to potential customers. For Canelo Mobile, the connection was even clearer, with Liberty co-branding the service alongside Alvarez himself.

Anyone trying to predict the future of the Trump Mobile might be curious as to how long the Canelo Mobile lasted. After its launch in 2020, there have been no posts for either Instagram or Facebook Pages after July 2022. Its website remained active for a few years longer, however Wayback Machine Archives It suggests that its images and layout started to break down by February 2025, and now the website is completely offline, with canelomobile.com The domain is up for auction. There is absolutely no mention of “Canelo Mobile” after the boxer Current location. I reached out to Alvarez’s publicist for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

It’s difficult to know whether or not Canelo Mobile was a success, as each social media profile only has a few thousand followers, and he never received much media attention, but he supposedly made enough money for Liberty Mobile to justify a second attempt.

The biggest difference between the two companies is that Trump Mobile has focused more on the idea of ​​manufacturing its own devices, which Hendrickson described as a way to “differentiate” from competitors. “There has never been a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) or carrier that built its own phones,” Hendrickson told me. Other carriers offered branded devices, of course, as did T-Mobile Its Revvl phones for years – but were manufactured under contract by white label manufacturers. Trump Mobile, whose “final assembly” is being done in Miami, claims to be more directly involved.

That’s hard to reconcile, with Hendrickson’s insistence that the company is primarily an MVNO. When discussing the future of the business, he’s more eager to talk about adding new phone plans and expanding MVNOs globally than he is about building more phones. Hendrickson calls the T1 phone “this little thing we wanted to do,” while Thomas says the company’s goal “is to get subscribers…and the phone is a tool that helps do that.”

“We’re in the razor blade business, we’re not in the razor blade business,” Hendrickson says, stressing that Trump Mobile’s business is selling cellphone plans. This is to the customers’ advantage, or so the argument goes: Because the phone is not the company’s “profit center,” Hendrickson says it can be sold at a “much lower margin,” resulting in a more affordable product. I’m not convinced about Trump’s phone He is Such good value – the updated spec sheet mostly matches other mid-range Android devices, many of which are cheaper, and may not live up to these specs depending on details like wireless charging or water resistance. Refurbished Apple and Samsung phones are also from the company Clearly bad deals.

Then again, the question of value is part of the reason Hendrickson, Thomas and O’Brien made the leap from boxer to reality TV star-turned-president in the first place. Canelo Mobile was cheaper than Trump Mobile, even taking inflation into account. Plans are announced starting at $15 per month, with phones starting at $199.99. By contrast, the only plan available for Trump Mobile is $47.45 per month, and the T1 is currently listed at $499 but its price is expected to rise after its eventual launch, likely close to double that price. They explain that Trump is a premium brand.

“You think of Trump, and I immediately think of quality. I think of a high-end brand,” Hendrickson says. “For us, it’s about honoring that brand, honoring that legacy of quality and integrity.”

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