Sprint Bets Big On the iPhone

hazytodd was one of several readers to tip news of Sprint Nextel's plan to grab a piece of the iPhone action in order to halt the company's downward slide. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Sprint has committed to buying 30.5 million iPhones over the next five years (summary of paywalled WSJ story), which at retail rates works out to roughly $20 billion. "To sell that many iPhones, Sprint would have to double its rolls of contract customers, convert all of them to the Apple device or a combination of the two." A separate rumor at Boy Genius Report suggests the iPhone 5 may be a Sprint exclusive until sometime next year, with Verizon and AT&T getting the upgraded iPhone 4S until then. Apple is holding an event to unveil the new phone tomorrow.

Re:What are they thinking?

[Missing.Matter]

Are they not doing any of that? I'm not a sprint customer, but I've been thinking of switching. They seem to be the only carrier left with an unlimited data plan, their rates seem fairly competitive, and at least in my area coverage is complete (although I don't know how it is around the rest of the country). Considering the iPhone's popularity, perhaps not having it really is limiting their growth. Perhaps maybe $20B is a comparatively cheap way of growing their market share (compared to infrastructure improvements, for example).

Re:What are they thinking?

[Miamicanes]

> Providing more price-competitive packages.

Compared to what? Sprint has plenty of warts, but price (at least, for individual customers with no family plan and exactly one phone who'd burn through AT&T and Verizon's caps within a matter of days and are perfectly cool with $69.95 + $10 for 450 minutes of peak airtime, and more or less unlimited everything else) isn't really something I'd classify as one of them.

> Providing better 4G caps than the competition.

Root your phone like everyone else, and the 4g hotspot caps are meaningless. Sprint chose that specific group very carefully -- the nontechnical users who actually go out and PAY for an official hotspot plan are almost exactly the same group who'll try to use their phone as their one and only means of internet access.

Sprint isn't stupid... they know the overwhelming majority of users who root, reflash, and tether for free already have the most expensive cable or DSL internet access they can buy, and use it instead of their Sprint data service when they're at home just because it's faster and works better. To repeat: Sprint really doesn't care about users who tether once in a blue moon so they can get online with their laptop at an airport somewhere while waiting for a plane. Sprint passionately cares about users who try to use tethering as a substitute for real internet service and 21st-century dialup.

Nobody who has high-end internet access at home is going to screw around with torrenting from a tethered phone, because it would be slow, suck, and annoyingly cause most of your incoming calls to end up going straight to voicemail. Likewise, statistically nobody with the means to tether is going to stream lots of HD video, because it's not free -- users who tether for free rip their content from Blu-Ray, convert it to .mkv, copy it to their 32-gig Class 10 microSD cards, and watch it from THERE. Sprint is one of the few carriers who understands that the users who can most easily subvert any controls they try to impose are likely to be the ones who fall towards the lower end of total monthly data use, simply because those users have better ways of getting online anyway.

> Upgrading network capacity.

No arguments there. Sprint definitely has plenty of room to improve in that regard.

Re:Apple

[hedwards]

I for one did immediately. It was a movie that deserved to be much more popular. I'm not sure who wrote it, but they did a really good job of putting that sort of detail in without providing even the slightest hint as to how one used the sea shells.

Or the somewhat more explained rise of Taco Bell to rule over the restaurant industry.