Sprint CEO Defends Company's Decision To Bet It All On the iPhone

zacharye writes "Sprint chief executive Dan Hesse is being watched closely by the company's board of directors, but the CEO has to answer to investors and subscribers as well. Last year in October, Hesse revealed that the company is placing a massive $15.5 billion bet on Apple's iPhone, and in a recent interview, Hesse defended the move, which has been criticized by a number of industry watchers. From the article: '“Subsidies are heavy for the iPhone. This is the reason why a high percentage of new customers is important,” Hesse said during the interview. “But iPhone customers have a lower level of churn and they actually use less data on average than a high-end 4G Android device. So from a cost point of view and a customer lifetime value perspective, they’re more profitable than the average smartphone customer.”'"

Comments

Apple Customers

[ifiwereasculptor]

They pay more and use less? What a shocker! Who would have thought?

Re:Apple Customers

[jmd_akbar]

They pay more and use less? What a shocker! Who would have thought?

Steve Jobs.

Re:Apple Customers

[ScrewMaster]

Women don't fiind endless babble about how terrible the iPhone is to be a turn on.

That's odd: most Android people I know (myself included) don't waste much time in conversation discussing phones, especially with members of the opposite sex, much less something such as the iPhone that we simply could not care less about. It's iUser arrogance to believe that all of us Android users care about the iPhone, feel threatened by it in some way. We don't, and we look down at people who so willingly allow themselves to be technologically shackled. But hey, to each their own.

Matter of established fact, it's the Apple crowd that has always been by far the most vocal. I've been in this business for a long time, before there was an Apple ][. And, since the advent of the Mac, and Jobs' deliberate efforts to encourage class envy to increase sales, it's always been the Apple people that are constantly deriding those using competing products. In the old days, tell a Mac user that his machine is limited because it didn't have any peripheral slots and he would say, "Why would you need them?" Today, ask an iPhone user why his phone won't support tethering, why it is limited to a single GUI, why it won't allow installation of non-Market apps, and he'll say, "Why would you want to do that?" Nothing changes but their underwear, I guess.

I dislike Apple intensely because at one point (decades ago) I made my living coding for Apple systems, and Apple truly was about freedom, openness, and the spirit of the personal computing revolution. Granted, that was Wozniak's influence: Jobs always was a dick. But today they pay lip service to freedom while doing their level best to turn you into a mere consumer of paid media, bought solely from Apple. No thanks.

Re:Apple Customers

[Anonymous Coward]

That was a very long rebuttal to a criticism of Android fans who endlessly babble about how they hate Apple.

Re:Apple Customers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, just wow.

First you mention iUser arrogance, then in the next sentence mention looking down on those (presumably iPhone owners) who let themselves be technologically shackled??

if an iPhone owner wrote the same thing about androids, they'd be modded down and called an elitist fanboy. But apparently it's okay to be an elitist android owner and ironically mock iPhone user elitism.

WiMax and LTE

[Monoman]

Can he defend their WiMax flub? Can he defend contracting with a company that has a non-existant LTE solution?

Re:WiMax and LTE

[hemp]

What's the attraction to LTE when you have a 2GB datacap?

This is bullshit.

[acid06]

If you wany an apples to apples comparison, you should, at the very least, compare mobile web traffic from iOS to mobile web traffic from high-end 4G Android device - which is what the CEO was talking. And no one seems to ever announce this sort of data.

Stop with the fanboism. Seriously.

Re:Slashdot trolls

[ScrewMaster]

A contrived negative Apple comment. Who would have thought?

Dude, the GP just defined Apple's entire business model. Seriously, that's it in a nutshell.

Furthermore, like it or not, Apple is deserving of much approbation, far more than they get on this site.

Re:iPhone users

[AmiMoJo]

You forgot richer and better educated.

Because there are cheap Android phones that less well off people can afford, where as Apple phones are only available to people with a higher level of disposable income.

Oh and more sexually active

Being raped by Apple doesn't count.

Re:Slashdot trolls

[hairyfeet]

What I don't get is why iFanbois have such a hard time accepting a HELL of a lot of their buzz is branding and marketing. Not saying they don't build good products, because they do, but while Air Jordan is a nice shoe it ain't the leather that causes fistfights on release day, its the brand. Hell be happy, your favorite company has a brand like Prada and Porsche that people will pay assraping prices for that half eaten Apple logo.

Jobs spent most of his life devoted to building that brand into one of the most recognizable on the planet, right up there with Coca Cola and Disney so just accept it, okay? I mean you don't see Ferrari owners going "Waah but its a good value for the money waah!" because guess what? its not. Its a bad ass uberpowerful exotic which you are damned well gonna pay for that power and just because the telecos are willing to eat billions in subsidies in the hopes of using an Apple device to lock customers into multiyear contracts so that Joe the plumber can have an iPhone doesn't magically make them priced for the masses, it just means the cost of the actual device is hidden.

but in the end it all comes down to branding and I sincerely doubt you'd see the lines or selling out you see with something like the iPad if it weren't for every celeb on the planet being seen with one. Apple is "hip" and "cool" and "THE" thing to have so people want one. Jobs spent years building that up and to just ignore it ignores the man's life's work. Is that REALLY what you want to do? To belittle what was arguably one of the best marketing men in history? Give the man the credit he is due folks, by the time the man checked out his company was the most wealthy on the planet and his products went from being at death's door and looked down upon when he came back to being THE elite brand and the man was able to do that in less than a decade. give the guy his props.