AfterDawn: News

Rumor: Sprint making $20 billion bet on iPhone

Sprint is preparing to purchase 30.5 million iPhones from Apple, worth around $20 billion, says the WSJ.

The deal will be from 2011-2015 and will finally allow the carrier to become the third in the U.S. to offer the popular smartphones.



At $20 billion over 4 years, CEO Dan Hesse says the company will not begin making money until 2014.

The CEO has told the board of directors that the company will need to double its current customer base to sell that many iPhones, or at least convert all of their current customers.

It appears the board had some reservations, but eventually signed off on the deal. One such reservation was worries that the iPhone would lose popularity by 2015.

The WSJ says the bet is an "all-or-nothing" and could very well bankrupt the company by 2015.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 4 Oct 2011 13:24

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• 4 comments

• KillerBug

  They want to double their customer base without building any new towers? So much for any quality their service once had.
  

  
  

  4.10.2011 23:49 #1

• Bozobub

  Well, with cross-licensing, they use Verizon towers a lot anyhow. But I agree, this deal looks pretty damned silly.

  5.10.2011 08:28 #2

• buxtahuda

  Originally posted by KillerBug: They want to double their customer base without building any new towers? So much for any quality their service once had. Lol, "quality." I guess their network wasn't so bad when I was with them, but considering what it was like to talk to someone about a problem, let alone fix one, I can't say they really ever had much quality. Easily over an hour on hold just to begin talking about billing discrepancies, almost two and a half hours just to change over from one phone to another.
  
  I can't imagine how bogged down the network will be with a bunch of Apple users, customer service will become a great myth of ancient times.

  5.10.2011 08:45 #3

• Bozobub

  Frankly, that's no longer necessarily true about Sprint (although they certainly were terrible in the past). I use them now, and have received excellent customer service from them, at least over the phone. Brick-and-mortar service, however, wasn't terrible, but no better than so-so...

  5.10.2011 09:14 #4