Investing to Wealth

Filed under: Products and services, Management, Sprint Nextel Corp (S)

Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE: S) continues to be bashed in the business media every other week it seems. The third-largest wireless company in the U.S. has shed hundreds of thousands of customers in the last 18 months as the larger competition has snagged customers with stellar sellers like Apple, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone 3G and other high-end handsets.

Sprint announced 8,000 layoffs this week, adding to the massive employee headcount lost by major corporations in the last three months. With losses in four of the past five quarters, massive layoffs and a shrinking customer base, is Sprint in real trouble? Not really -- it still has over 50 million wireless subscribers. Should it have lobbied to win the contract with Apple for the iPhone? While we'll never know if that was even possible, that one partnership alone could have completely reversed Sprint's fortunes in the last 24 months. The carrier is hoping the Palm Pre can make up for last ground, though. It may, but that one hand of cards can't win the poker tournament.

This BusinessWeek piece explains that Sprint's cash position is good and it's not in immediate need of greenbacks to service its debt. That can't happen forever, though. Sprint is heavily advertising that its family plans -- a way to increase average consumer bills -- is way cheaper than the competition. This is true. Is it enough to grab customers back? Some will come back because of the lure of cheaper bills, but is its been shown before, must-have devices (handset price and monthly plan price be damned) are more powerful. What can Sprint do? It doesn't have anything in this field right now.

It may be too late when the Palm Pre shows up.

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