Sprint has just unveiled its Q3 earnings report, and it’s looking pretty bittersweet. According to the company, net operating revenues reached $8.3 billion during the quarter (about two percent higher than Q3 2010), while additions of new wireless net subscribers reached a five year high, with 1.3 million customers hopping onboard. Of those 1.3 million, 304,000 were of the postpaid variety, 485,000 were prepaid and about 835,000 were wholesale. Sprint lost about 44,000 net postpaid customers this quarter, but that’s a major improvement over last quarter, when a little over 100,000 jumped ship, and marks a 59 percent improvement over
last year’s report. At the same time, however, the carrier reported net losses of $301 million — lower than
Q2’s figures, but not exactly encouraging, either. As far as the future goes, the folks at Overland Park expect to end the year with even more new subscribers, though it remains to be seen whether that
long-awaited LTE rollout can make much of a dent in its bottom line. Check out the press release in full, after the break.
Update: Listening in on the earnings call it’s clear Sprint is really counting on the iPhone to help it run with the big dogs. According to some convoluted metaphor, the carrier is the Oakland A’s in Moneyball and Apple’s handset is A-Rod (who never spent a day with the Athletics… but we digress). Still, Sprint expects more loyalty and bigger profits from customers who choose the iPhone — at least for the next four years, after which it’ll have to negotiate a new deal with the Cupertino crew.
Update 2: Sprint also clarified that, in addition to its deal with LightSquared, it will be working with Clearwire to deliver LTE network coverage. The carrier has reached a preliminary agreement with its WiMAX partner, but expects to announce a wholesale deal soon.
Update 3: We already knew that the iPhone 4S launch was the company’s best launch ever for a family, but now the company’s confirming that it was its best launch ever for any device.
Continue reading Sprint announces Q3 earnings: net subs reach five year high, net losses at $300 million
Sprint announces Q3 earnings: net subs reach five year high, net losses at $300 million originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Oct 2011 07:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Add together ten million Galaxy S IIs, a dollop of Galaxy Nexii, a gargantuan gathering of Galaxy Notes and a healthy serving of Badas, and what do you get? 300 million handset sales so far in 2011, that’s what. And Samsung claims that makes this the best year in its mobile-making history, surpassing 2010 by a whopping 20 million. Of course, more sales doesn’t necessarily translate into greater revenue — Nokia is still the world’s largest manufacturer by volume and is a case in point. Nevertheless, we’ll know more when Samsung reveals its Q4 earnings next month.
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