“Deutsche Telekom AG has held talks to sell its T-Mobile USA unit to Sprint Nextel Corp. in exchange for a major stake in the combined entity, said people with knowledge of the matter,” Serena Saitto, Jacqueline Simmons, and Jeffrey McCracken report for Bloomberg.
“Talks have been on and off, and a deal may not be reached, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks are private,” Saitto, Simmons, and McCracken report. “The companies haven’t been able to agree on the valuation of T-Mobile USA, which reported a drop in profit in the fourth quarter, the people said.”
“A merger of Sprint and T-Mobile USA would combine the third- and fourth-largest U.S. wireless providers behind Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. T-Mobile USA may be worth $15 billion to $20 billion, according to Michael Kovacocy, an analyst at Evolution Securities in London,” Saitto, Simmons, and McCracken report. “Sprint’s market value was $13.6 billion as of yesterday’s close.”
Saitto, Simmons, and McCracken report, “T-Mobile, which accounts for about a quarter of Deutsche Telekom’s sales, has lost customers at an accelerated rate as it trailed rivals in building out a third-generation mobile network and missed out on being able to sell Apple Inc.’s iPhone.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: [Apple’s new iPhone] will change the mobile device market in radical ways. I am, if anything, understating the havoc iPhone will cause. – SteveJack, MacDailyNews, January 10, 2007