EVO 4G Helps Boost Sprint to First Subscriber Gain in Three Years
Let me paint you a picture: For the past three years, quarter over quarter, more people have been deactivating their Sprint phones and cutting ties with the carrier than have been new subscribers signing up. Yes, for three years Sprint has slowly been losing its customer base as they have strained for relevancy in a rapidly expanding mobile market.
Now picture this: the HTC EVO 4G, the first phone to use the nation’s first 4G network, drops on Sprint towards the end of the second quarter of 2010, and just like that Sprint’s number of new subscribers is greater than the number of those saying farewell to the carrier for the first time in three years. Greater to the tune of 111,000 net subscribers gained. Goes to show what sort of impact great, feature-rich products can have.
They still lost a great deal of subscribers at 763,000, and didn’t quite post profits for Q2. They gained $8 billion in revenue but ended up with net losses of $760 million. These numbers hardly hold a candle to the Q2 figures Verizon recently reported, but it’s a move in a positive direction for a carrier that could have almost been called down for the count.