Sprint is hemorrhaging customers and money- Palm is scared stiff
The economy has hit U.S. wireless carriers hard and Sprint maybe hardest of all. They released their financial information this week and it’s looking bleak for the carrier. There is no way to put a positive spin on losing over $1 billion and 1.3 million customers. This could spell the beginning of the end for Sprint as a wireless carrier.
Sprint’s negative outlook must be making Palm shake in its boots, probably more than anyone. Palm has hitched their last wagon, the Palm Pre smartphone, to the Sprint network in the U.S. They cannot be feeling good at all to be tied to Sprint for a year, given Sprint’s financial picture. It’s going to be hard for Sprint to attract customers to jump ship from other carriers to their leaking network. Palm must surely realize that and I suspect many late-night board meetings are discussing it.
The Palm Pre has captured the attention of a lot of folks, Kevin especially, and the beleaguered company certainly doesn’t need the sinking of Sprint piled on its back. Let’s hope Palm didn’t hitch that wagon to a lame horse.
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I might have left my iPhone 3G to go after a Palm Pre, but never while its on CDMA and branded under Sprint. So, if Sprint was banking on people switching over from other carriers by having initial exclusivity on the Pre, both parties should be concerned that it may be a bust, especially if the Pre has some sort of flaw or hindrance from making it the ultimate mobile device.
I get the loyalty thing going on between Sprint and Palm. Sprint has been good to Palm, when they probably didn’t even deserve it.
However, why Palm wouldn’t start looking out for number one, in this case, is beyond me. Palm, itself, has been on life support for some time now. Hooking up with a carrier that’s been dying an even slower death just doesn’t make much sense.
I have to think they’d be in a lot better position had they locked in with a larger, more stable, carrier. I really hope this doesn’t come back to bite them. I’m really pulling for Palm.
I know several folks that work at a Sprint Call Center. Morale is very bad. Their call center software they have to use is horrendous. They were hired as “tech support” but are really just salesman (they even have sales quotas). Next time you have to call Sprint customer service just remember that these people have to put up with a very bad working environment dumped on them by extremely poor management. I know most of the Baby Bell customer service is not good, but Sprint has to be one of the worst IMO.
I had a very nice experience with Sprint. Their network here in S. Florida is excellent. I made a switch to T-Mobile for the G1 and their service is horrendous. Dropped calls all over the place.
I’m very interested in the Pre and potentially coming back to Sprint soon.
Also, I found that Sprint customer service has improved vastly. They now offer all their contact info upfront and work hard at solving your issues. That wasnt the case when I started with them but, I think, they’ve gotten the message.
The wife and I are in with Sprint under the SERO plan (got in before they ended it, I believe). While there were some issues out of the gate, Sprint customer service was quite helpful with it. There service is quite good where we are on the SF Bay Peninsula other than actually in our apartment, where dropped calls are an issue. Overall, we’ve been much more pleased with Sprint than we were with Verizon.
> They released their financial information this week and
> it’s looking bleak for the carrier. There is no way to
> put a positive spin on losing over $1 billion and 1.3
> million customers. This could spell the beginning of the
> end for Sprint as a wireless carrier.
Really? I don’t follow (or invest in) Sprint, but I did read that Sprint’s stock price jumped after the recent earnings announcement. You can see it here:
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=S#symbol=S;range=5d
So it seems a lot of investors were somehow able to put a positive spin on the results…
Also, I am not sure if I am alone in this, but the title of this blog post (Palm is scared stiff) is rather annoying as you don’t seem to have any evidence for this, yet you state it as a fact. These sensationalistic titles seem to be a new and recent here on this site… or maybe I just didn’t notice it before. But it sure doesn’t look good to me (but then, it’s your site…. oh, wait…)
Wow. I hope Sprint recovers; I’ve had great experiences with them, and if Verizon is the ONLY cdma service… that’s not a monopoly, but they can’t roam with anyone. I’d rather go with T-Mobile.
I’ve been with Sprint and Verizon and T-Mobile and it’s not that different anywhere. I’m not under contract right now and the Pre looks interesting enough that I will probaly switch to Sprint to get it.
I’m on Verizon, but I’m loving what I’ve seen of the Pre so far. I think Palm has been reinvigorated, so I can see them moving quick to get the GSM version out overseas. And since Sprint and Verizon both work on CDMA, the changes to the radio would be minimal. Hopefully they wrote the terms of the agreement loose enough to get Palm out of the exclusivity if things turn really sour. Or, Sprint could be reinvigorated with the Pre making these announcements a bump in the road. Time to wait and see.