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No, Apple should buy Verizon, fire the whole customer service division and start over.

One of the original goals behind the iPhone was (yet another attempt) to turn the cell providers into "dumb pipes." Apple got a lot further towards that goal than any other company has lately, but the 3G is both an admission of (temporary) defeat, and a line in the sand in that regard.

There is no value for Apple in a cell phone provider company. they don't have anything that is worth the purchase price.

Also, sprint has WiMax, but you can use WiMax without Sprint and the infrastructure they would be buying is only good for *portions* of the USA. Apple's iPhone business is already world-wide, owning some WiMax equipment in Sacramento is not going to help them with Holland and South Africa.

Nov 11, 08 - 12:29 pm Comment from: starnyc

No, apple should buy NVIDIA. Sprint's customers are bottom feeders and don't match up to apple demographics.

Terrible idea.

No reasons required.

Unless you're brain dead that is.

Your both right and wrong about this jeremy. Yes, Steve did admit temporary defeat by succumbing to the market's demand for 3G services. Really Steve wanted to wait for 4G networks but it was going to take too long.
So now we have the 3G iphone.

For now.

But as we all know Steve likes to think and plan for the long term. And he sees the wireless future that is coming and wants to prepare for it. Plus, I'm sure he doesn't like dealing with AT&T;which despite Apple's resistance to AT&T;'s control still gets pushed around by them a bit.
Steve does not like to be pushed around.

I really think in the near future Apple will be owning a cell phone company so they can build a nationwide 4G network. I just know which company.

Reasons not to buy Sprint:

1) existing ATT partnership
2) CDMA
3) cost to re-attract customers to a dying brand (Sprint) or re-brand its dying network
4) Sprint is US-based; the iPhone is globally marketed.
5) distraction bringing Apple management up to speed on the fine details of the cellular communications industry
6) Apple needs cash for continued improvements to its existing product lineup, especially AppleTV, the Apple Mini, the PowerMac tower, and the new SnowLeopard.
7) Apple need not own other companies in order to improve its business. It can forge partnerships or buy large equity stakes.
8) If Apple goes on a reckless buying spree, then they would waste money and become another hated Microsoft. Better to be good than big.

Nov 11, 08 - 12:33 pm Comment from: HMCIV

@starnyc

As a Sprint customer I don't appreciate your judgement regarding my compatibility with Apple. You should be more sensitive.

P.S. - Can I lick the underside of your PC Pro?

Didn't Jobs mention when the iPhone was released that Apple wants to "jump on the gsm bandwagon?" Buying a cdma carrier is completely opposite of Apple's plans.

Second, I doubt Apple wants to go down with that sinking ship. You forget about the flip-side as well... there's plenty of pundits who will slate Apple at every opportunity.

And what happens when new cell phones/manufacturers come knocking on Sprint/Apple's door? Would it be business as usual or what Apple say "nothing that competes with our cdma iPhone?" Of course Apple would have to let them in or face the FTC. Then, really, what does that gain Apple?

think global.

buy yourself a passport and leave the continent.

No way, I worked for Verizon for the last 5 years (now I'm back in grad school) and the telecom industry has margins Apple shouldn't ever get involved with.

They need to stick to their core competency - making awesome computers and outsource the telecom piece. As both an avid Apple user and a person that owns a number of shares I would absolutely vote no to buying Sprint, it's a dead company and it could take that great Apple name and drag it in the mud with them.

Talk about filling space. There are so many other possible accusations that make sense if Apple was a takeover company like Cisco but they are not. And why would they jeopardize the deal with ATT for the sake of a losing brand like Sprint

Buying Fone would be a much more interesting proposition. Not that that will happen either.

By the way, I meant that I just don't know which company Apple may buy. But I seriously think Apple wants to build a next generation wireless infrastructure in the US that STEVE HIMSELF (oops I mean apple) controls.

No, Apple should throw an investment carrot to GM. Joint venture a new "future car" that is fully integrated with the web. GM needs the cash and Apple needs to get into that game. Can you imagine an iPhone (connected to a screen size X4) integrated as an entertainment/information center? Merely attach your iPhone and it becomes part of the car's web services.

Microsoft & Ford have demonstrated market interest, but it is poorly executed. By proving what can be done, Apple can grab other auto industry execs attention and finally get the attention that it deserves.

Buy Sony? Buy Sprint? completely moronic, your article is a waste of bytes. You have no business sense.

Nov 11, 08 - 01:11 pm Comment from: TowerTone

So this is where everyone is...
I think Apple would be better off going in this direction

http://www.wirelessinnovationalliance.org/?gclid=CLX3hbXW7ZYCFRPZDAodEFMisA

or is the same?

wow, lets all go buy seats on the titanic?

Nov 11, 08 - 01:20 pm Comment from: TowerTone

Also, Greg, nice work on the finishes. I spent several years in the 90s doing less elaborate detail, mainly subtle textures that were less dramatic (like the 'Blue Wash', 'Metal', and 'Burnished Texture') and know what a pain/pleasure they are to create.

Horrible idea for these reasons:

1. AT&T;contract still has a couple of years left on it
2. AT&T;seems to be willing to bend over backwards to promote the iPhone and do what Apple wants.
3. Sprint is declining rapidly
4. Wireless carriers are like PC box builders – pretty generic, similar product with little differentiation. Most people couldn't care less which carrier they used so long as their phone works
5. HUGE increase in R&D;costs to keep networks evolving
6. MASSIVE maintenance on existing hardware, much of which is obsolete right now

and finally . . .

7. A COLOSSAL waste of $25 billion

No Apple should not buy Sprint and they should get away from AT&T;as quick as possible. I have Sprint and they really don't care about their customers. And, having been a previous AT&T;customer I have refused to buy an iPhone because I WON"T become an AT&T;customer again. The only reason I have stayed with Sprint is the slightly better coverage where I live. Having supervised a 911 center through Phase Two compliance I saw who had the best coverage. By a cat whisker it was Sprint but, there were all pretty sad. Currently I have an iTouch to go with my Sprint phone. Still get all the joy joy of owning an Apple device that can connect me to the internet and provide all the cool syncing Mac Apps and No AT&T;.

Why buy Sprint. It cost Apple nothing to just let them bleed out and shut them self down. Buy up the equipment in the bank fire sale for 10 cents on the dollar or less.

Would rather they buy one in China!

Interestingly, both AT&T;, a GSM carrier, and Verizon, a CDMA carrier, have selected LTE (Long Term Evolution) for their 4G technology, while Sprint is moving forward with WiMax. I don't really know beans about this, but here are some basics:
• LTE download speeds of 326Mbps (w/20MHz bandwidth)
• LTE upload speeds of 86Mbps (w/20MHz bandwidth)
• Scalability (operates @1.4-20MHz)
• TDD/FDD Modes
• Reduced latency to 10 milliseconds (<100 milliseconds from active to inactive)
4G Sprint: available sooner -- by 2009 in some areas.
4G AT&T;/Verizon: not available until 2012-2015

If Sprint sticks with the 1900MHz frequency for 4G, new WiMax phones would remain compatible with old cellular repeaters.

One of the really bad ideas I have seen. Sprint is dead. The body just hasn't fallen over yet.

Nov 11, 08 - 04:31 pm Comment from: TheConfuzed1

I left Sprint, for AT&T;, because of the iPhone.

Of course, I didn't hesitate one bit before doing so, as their service was atrocious.

Perhaps Jobs should plot the takeover of AT&T;? I can imagine Steve right now in his office hatching some scheme to take AT&T;for himself...erm...I mean for Apple.

steve: "MUHOOHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!"

Nov 11, 08 - 06:04 pm Comment from: MacMarc

The acquisition of Sprint would only benefit Sprint. Therefore, it won't happen.

Nov 11, 08 - 06:35 pm Comment from: derekcurrie

The author of this incredibly dumdum idea has clearly never read anything at all about corporate mergers and takeovers. What he is proposing would be deadly for Apple. Here is why:

Every company has a corporate culture. It travels with the company wherever it goes. If a company full of dickheads is purchased by a happy, successful positive work culture company, do not expect the positive culture to spread into the negative. Fools will leap in where angels fear to tread, and that is certainly a nice thought, but expect failure. What happens instead is that the positive company shoves their negative companion company away at arm's length in order to stop their infection from spreading.

Three of the worst companies I know of regarding respect of the customer are Direct TV, Circuit City (who deservedly have gone bankrupt this week), and Sprint. And one would want to infect JD Power Award winning Apple with the long standing crap attitude of losers Sprint because WHY? Apple know better, and so should this MBA school dropout. Utter rubbish of an idea.

Nov 11, 08 - 06:39 pm Comment from: derekcurrie

PS: No offense Greg. We all have our skills and our blind spots. This is why humans thrive on diversity and fail without it.

@derekcurie

Well one way Apple could keep any negative corporate culture from spreading to itself from Sprint (or any acquisition) is to fire all of Sprint's management.
Then Steve could lay down the law and mandate what the new corporate culture should be for whoever is left. And if they don't like it then they can be shown the door.

NO WAY! I've worked in the wireless industry for 15 years, from Engineer to GM. Sprint has no talent. I worked for them about 13 years ago, and it is still well known among insiders to this day that their engineering, ops, and cust. service groups are the joke of the industry. Apple would be decimated taking them over. Apple has no management strength in what it takes to run a wireless carrier, and neither does Sprint. Apple would go down the tubes.

Sprint would've agreed to a buyout at anytime over the last several years, but absolutely nobody wants anything to do with them.

Very bad idea, and not going to happen.

Actually, it's not a bad idea. Apple would be able to buy Sprint and still have a nice hunk of its $25M (and growing) cash pile.

I am a former Sprint customer who left Sprint solely for the iPhone. As an AT&T;residential customer I can tell you that AT&T;customer service is FAR WORSE than anything I've experienced at Sprint. As a matter of fact, until the purchase of Nextel, Sprint had the best customer service and line quality of anyone in the business (IMHO).

I was very disappointed to hear that the former CEO of Sprint passed on the idea of the iPhone. Sprint is actually the better fit of ALL the cellular companies because they foresaw the coming demand for downloadable and streaming video on handheld units and have already built the hooks and infrastructure necessary to accomplish this.

Forget about CDMA and GSM as they are both ancient technologies. With WiMax and the right software in the handset you can bypass both and make calls over the internet a la Skype or Vonage. WiMax is 4G NOW!!!!

If Apple were to propose a friendly merger with stock swap it could then use some of that $25M cash pile to partner with Sprint, Clearwire, Google, Samsung et al to finish the build-out of WiMax here in the US. The rest of the world is already ahead of us in WiMax deployment and will continue to grow accordingly.

Becoming a WiMax partner also helps Apple with its computer hardware growth by allowing ALL Macs to bypass the telephone and cable companies for internet access and do so at speeds faster than what is currently offered (especially by the telcos with their shameful DSL speeds).

So again, you may want to rethink the reasons why this is such a bad idea.

Wimax is weak. All 4G is going to have a tough time working. They won't be able to charge much. It will only work well in high frequency spectrum. They will need an unbelievable amount of backhaul from the cell sites. Wimax is all marketing. It will only work in very small and densely populated areas with minimal siting challenges. Sprint has been all hype for as long as I can remember. They have failed at EVERY SINGLE strategy initiative. Their "new" alliance with the cable companies is another doomed to failure. They tried that once already.

If another telco will not buy Sprint, what makes you think AAPL would? These fairy tales spread around the web are getting weak.

Nov 11, 08 - 08:47 pm Comment from: MacSmiley

I see more pros than cons here, but it would mean the iPhone would finally come to South Dakota.

Otherwise, I agree that Nextel messed up Sprint's customer service in a huge way.

I cannot agree more about Spring being better than AT&T;. The iPhone is great, but AT&T;is more dead spots in more places. The 3G network is often slower than EDGE for a variety of reasons. The acquisition of Sprint may be a pipe dream, but it would be a good move. What a way to really control cell phone/service direction. Apple has always been about the whole experience. Maybe Jobs is just going to sell 50 million iPhones, then after they sell the 50 million iPhones that are incompatible with Sprint, then Apple acquires Sprint, switches the iPhone to their network, but the old phones do not work with Sprint, so the 50 million get to buy new Sprint compatible iPhones. I really like that idea if I am running Apple. Imagine 100 million iPhones sold to 50 million customers. Talk about revenue streams. Not a bad profit. Also you get to control your own phone network. Imagine the possibilities.

Nov 11, 08 - 10:13 pm Comment from: Desinformado

Apple should buy AMD for chips to the mac platform, AMD owns ATI then buy Nvidia and become the most important supplier of video cards technology...Papermaster and the Semi Pa team creating specialized chips for mac products will position Apple in the front of the front.

Apple should focus on the creative apps, possibly storage and the enterprise. Buy out adobe, or a cobination of telestream, sedna presenter, active storage inc, or sun microsystems. Nividia looks like a smart buy and possibly infineon and broadcom. With Papermaster at the helm of the chip side of things imagine the possibilities. AMD might be viable as well.

Quote:

"If another telco will not buy Sprint, what makes you think AAPL would?"


Um, I guess you flunked cellular service 101. Probably because both ATT and Verizon use GSM and Sprint uses the CDMA protocol.

Current generation iPhones would not necessarily be incompatible with a WiMax solution or left out of the mix. Again, Apple (or a third party) could easily create software that could run on the phone that would allow you to make phone calls via a WiMax internet connection.

And for people who would argue that WiMax would initially be deployed/available only in high-population areas, just save it. ATT's 3G network isn't exactly ubiquitous.

The point is that even if you live in an area where WiMax was not currently available you could still use your own WiFi home network to make phone calls with your iPhone (assuming you have a WiFi/Airport setup in the first place)

Nov 12, 08 - 02:50 am Comment from: amyhre

If Apple must buy a telephone company, I'd say Verizon would be more in-line with where Apple's hockey puck mouse is headed next. Verizon's already got (some) 4G stuff in place, it's a a pretty well-known and not-spiraling-down-the-hole telco and it's actually got great coverage in my area (that's one reason none of my family have iPhones). They'd even get Verizon's FiOS networks in the package and that's great for delivering content to Macs and AppleTVs alike (I should know). The main problem I see is that Verizon is worth considerably more than Sprint. It would seriously eat up Apple's cash reserves to acquire it, and probably deplete them and start working on a share trade for the execs of Verizon or something. Having been a Mac user through the good times as well as the bad, I've started to believe that if it's Apple, even the seemingly impossible can be achieved.

This is actually a good idea..You pay sprint for their current income stream, there is no goodwill value left. Pitch the SPRINT name and create a name easily identifiable with the Apple brand.
AT &T;is too maxed out to handle the landslide of subscribers . -and they will fight Apple tooth and nail, poison pills and all.
Sprint has 1/2 millon idle numbers (so to speak)

This is a good idea but your view of Sprint is skewed. Yes they have had customer service issues, billing issues, network issues, etc... BUT so has EVERY other wireless carrier out there. Reading through the many posts and lack of Telecom wisdom it's safe to say the complaint regarding CDMA is weak. If CDMA is such a problem then why would Asia embrace the technology? Check where your phone was made! Seriously.

The time is right for Apple to step up and buy Sprint and do exactly what many are saying, redfine the leadership from the top down, I believe Sprints current CEO is on the right track and without help they will bring the company back and that will also be in part to the CFOs efforts, he's a real hatchet man but knows what to do where and you will see Sprint come back into profitability, they will rebuild the Nextel brand and find an amiable solution for that Network in time.

What I do doubt is that any of the Apple Fans will agree with this option because of the diehard allegiance many seem to have with AT&T;, I really don't understand it at all because AT&T;has a terrible 3G footprint and that is without dispute, customer service is equally terrible and in regards to the plans they offer, no comparison to Sprint, the $99 unlimited plan is the best available bar none.

Steve Jobs, if your listening, buy Sprint and make this the No 1 wireless company in the US and drive your wireless brand internationally. It's time!

Note to "Let's rethink this" - Verizon is a CDMA carrier, just as Sprint and Alltel are.

No doubt, Sprint has been beaten up in the press - but remember the time lag between reality and perception. At this point, Sprint is delivering excellent customer service - and the network provides me with coverage unmatched by ATT here in the South. No doubt about it, several years ago, Customer Service was terrible - but they've obviously made changes. Won a few JDPower awards lately as well. Also, as someone above made the point, Sprint has been at the forefront of data applications of all types. Sprint is going through a rough patch, but i'm buying stock at these prices.

It is an excellent idea. Sprint stock is on sale and under valued. The CDMA network today is built for data. WiMax is the next generation for data and Sprint is 2 years ahead of Verizon and AT&T;with this 4th generation technology that will launch as a consumer play. WiMax plays well into Apple's gamming portfolio and competitive direction of the iPhone and IPod against Sony.

Sprint would benefit from Apples customer service record and product development while Apple benefits from Sprints leadership in a superior communication network.

Quote:

"Note to "Let's rethink this" - Verizon is a CDMA carrier, just as Sprint and Alltel are."

You are correct. Thank you for correcting me on a point I at one time knew off the top of my head.

Still, I don't think Verizon would want to buy Sprint because they would then have to upgrade their entire network to match what Sprint currently offers to their customers and I don't think they are willing to make that kind of investment after a hypothetical purchase of Sprint.

FIOS would be the holy grail of high speed internet but the problem is that unless you leave in a new housing community it would leave out too much of current phone subscribers to lay the fiber from the telco to each potential customer's home due to the expense required. That is why there is such a push by Sprint and others for WiMax as the cost/outlay is substantially less.

Quote:

"Sprint is going through a rough patch, but i'm buying stock at these prices."

You are not alone there. I have been buying Sprint stock for some time now and even a small 'pop' will bring a nice return with the recent purchases I've made over the last few weeks at these prices.

My apologies as I meant to put this comment in my previous post to you. Nonetheless, I hope you (we) get a nice return on investment!

Hi Greg,

That's an interesting idea, but it's sort of like Ford buying the freeway system or to buy a toll bridge. I personally think that Apple needs to concentrate on manufacturing fantastic electronic devices and not spread out into the mobile carrier market.

If they want to eventually make an iPhone that will work on Sprint, Verizon, and the other carrier's networks, that would be cool, and it would be beneficial to Apple to consider that, but to actually own a portion of the network that it wants to be in is ridiculous.

As a handset manufacturer, they may have some influence over carriers plans for a 4G network or would be able to figure out a better way of working with what we have.

The only thing Apple immediately needs for the Iphone is complete nationwide coverage. All Apple has to do is let the contract with AT+T expire. Buying another major corporation would be a drain on Apple management time. A complete waste.

You guys do know that Sprint is at 2.84 a share and they only have 2.86 billion shares, Sprint is worth only 8.1 billion I'm sure Sprint will not be satisfied with 8.1 more like 16 billion or so. I do not think its a wise investment though for apple they could do something else with their money.

Yes i agree apple is not supposed to buy sprint


Jokes

Sep 07, 09 - 07:37 am Comment from: sdsde

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