Sprint rolling the dice with 20bil iPhone deal

[office politics]

iPhone 5 -- Sprint scores exclusive thanks to $20 billion deal with Apple?

By: Jonathan S. Geller | Oct 3rd, 2011 at 02:29PM 461 CommentsFiled Under: Exclusives, Mobile

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sprint has entered into an agreement with Apple to purchase over $20 billion worth of iPhones over the next four years — that's around 30 million iPhones. It's said that Sprint won't even break even on the transaction until 2014, which is surely a huge risk on Sprint's part, but why? I have been going back and forth for weeks with one of my incredibly solid industry contacts on a piece of information that I couldn't really process at first — information that is so unbelievable, even from a source this solid, that I couldn't report it. With this new WSJ report on an Apple/Sprint deal, however, it doesn't look so crazy. Hit the break for more.

and

Report: 41% Of North American Mobile Users To Buy The iPhone 5 | TechCrunch

The recent InMobi consumer smartphone survey uncovers that 41% of current mobile users in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada plan to buy an iPhone 5—potentially making it the most successful launch from the consumer electronics giant to date. The study also finds that over 50% of those users will make the purchase within the first six months of the iPhone 5 launch, which inMobi says could take Apple significantly ahead of its June 2011 market position, and increase its mobile platform market share from 27% in June (comScore) to 41%.

i'm astonished by these reports. a buddy of mine has been a iphone fanboy for quite some time. hes has me believing the galaxy s ii is the new hotness. Apple was first to market with a touchscreen smartphone. It did well ... extremely well. I feel its time is up. Samsung and HTC have caught up to speed with their devices.

 

[KSoD]

The problem I can see is this. The iPhone 5 isnt offering anything new. I mean all the reports I have seen about the iPhone 5 show it having the same screen size as the iPhone 4. People want bigger now. I mean look at the Epic 4G Touch (Sprint version of the Samsung Galaxy II) which is 4.52 inches. The Samsung Infuse which is 4.5 inches and the upcoming Samsung Note which is going to be 5.3 inches in size. People want more bigger screens so the activities they do dont require them to hold the phone so close to them and zoom in on every page they visit. The only real big thing I have seen is the fact they are releasing it as Dual Core and 1GB of RAM. Not a big deal. My Motorola Atrix has that and that has been out since February. Considering it has the same size screen what is the big draw of the iPhone 5? Aside from the name? 4G? Got that in my Atrix as well.

I really cant see the iPhone 5 being a big killer in the mobile market. It isnt offering anything different than is already available to date. The only thing I see is the name. While it does have draw, if people go to it just for that without checking the other phones available, they are at a lose for what they could be getting into.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Considering the iPhone 4s was underwhelming Sprint may have made a bad bet. Plus it can only use their 3g network which isn't very fast.