Poor Poor Sprint…

Posted on 29 October 2009, at 1:00 pm, by Mark Chinsky

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SPRINT BRAND LOGO

It seems you can’t catch a break these days.

Most will agree that Sprint has:

Good coverage. Not the best, but very decent.
Excellent pricing for ‘all you can eat’ data and data/voice plans
Very aggressive calling circle scenarios including inexpensive options for unlimited calls to any cell phone 24×7.
Their advertising is everywhere (at least everywhere I look). Tons of creative web ads, all over Hulu, lots of product placement work such as Heroes etc
They got the first true iPhone competitor this year with the Palm Pre.
They have substantially improved customer service
They just released the HTC Hero Android Phone. So except for the iPhone, they have almost major smartphone and device available.

And yet… This came out today:

They lost 478 million in the last quarter. Significantly worse than a year ago, even with these new devices. (Yes, I know the Hero won’t affect things until the next reporting quarter)
Revenue slipped 9%
They lost 545 thousand subscribers net, including 801 thousand from traditional ‘post paid’ plans. This while AT&T added 2 million and Verizon 1.2 million. (The power of the iPhone…amazing)
They trade at about $3.18 per share. Just 2 years ago they were trading at around $20/share

You almost have to feel sorry for them. What does a CEO have to do to win these days?

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Tags | Sprint / Nextel

5 Comments For This Post

Wayne Schulz Says:
October 29th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I think in large part the game these days is won or lost based on phone selection. If you look at who is doing very well it’s all the carriers with some type of exclusive phone.

I was actually VERY interested in the HTC Hero — that is until seeing the Droid on Verizon..

Yeah, I guess Sprint can’t win these days…
Mark Chinsky Says:
October 29th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
True for AT&T but what was Verizon’s excuse?
Mark Vlastelica Says:
October 29th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
A lot of it is based on phone selection. I remember a couple of years ago I wanted to try Sprint when they still offered their SERO plans but they had a terribly weak phone selection. Right now they have a pretty good smartphone selection, but they’re still lacking in cool multimedia phones. Yeah, they do have the instinct, but Verizon had the Voyager, EnV touch, EnV 3, the chocolate phones and I’ve also seen a ton of the Samsung Alias phones in the wild. AT&T and Verizon have a ton of multimedia or messaging phones and a lot of people are willing to pay for unlimited text messaging, but not data and at that point the rate plans are almost the same on all of the carriers. Although if someone did want unlimited everything Sprint was the absolute best value until T-Mobile came out with their new rate plans.
Mark Chinsky Says:
October 30th, 2009 at 7:34 am
Yea but T-Mobile’s coverage footprint isn’t remotely as good.

Most reviews said the Instinct was better than the Voyager.

What good is a multimedia phone without data? Don’t they do web surfing etc?

Sprint has Pre, Blackberry, Samsung, Android and if anybody still cares, DirectConnect. They even have a Blackberry With DirectConnect.

The only major platform they don’t have is iPhone.

So why do they deserve these subscriber losses.

Years ago, I will admit their outsourced customer service was atrocious but they seem to have cleaned up that act.
Carly Z Says:
October 30th, 2009 at 8:20 am
I think the issue is in part perception. Sprint users without much loyalty to Sprint remembered the bad experiences and not the good. People who aren’t on Sprint remember hearing all the bad experiences and are reluctant to take the plunge.

I did the math and realized I’d probably save some serious money by switching to Sprint, but a combination of still being in a contract with AT&T and the general black cloud over Sprint makes me nervous. Maybe by the time my contract is up things will have changed, but it’s not a compelling enough carrier (even with cheap plans) to get me to switch early.