“Sprint Nextel Corp. will begin selling the iPhone 5 in mid-October, people familiar with the matter said, closing a huge hole in the No. 3 U.S. carrier’s lineup and giving Apple Inc. another channel for selling its popular phone,” Joann S. Lublin and Spencer E. Ante report for The Wall Street Journal.
“The timing, however, indicates Apple’s new iPhone will hit the market later than expected and too late to contribute to sales in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, which ends in September. Most observers had expected the device to arrive next month,” Lublin and Ante report. “Top U.S. carrier Verizon Wireless and No. 2 AT&T Inc. will begin selling the phone in mid-October as well, two of the people said. Sprint had more than 52 million subscribers at the end of the second quarter, compared with 106 million for Verizon and nearly 99 million for AT&T.”
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Lublin and Ante report, “Landing the iPhone is a big win for Sprint, whose results have suffered without being able to sell the iconic device. This February, Verizon Wireless began selling the iPhone 4, while AT&T has relied on versions of the Apple device to drive sales since 2007… Sprint will also carry the iPhone 4, starting at the same time, one person familiar with the situation said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The perfect bloodbath is brewing!
This will be their biggest launch ever… For anything
Turn up the Buzz!
13″ air books out of stock
IPads in short supply
IPhone 4 still red hot
iCloud looming
IOS 5 round the corner
An Apple TV brewing
Apple’s best 2 quarters ahead
Another Apple owned Holiday Season !!!!
$500 in sight.
And just to add a little spice, a significant, albeit mysterious, product transition is to be added to the mix. Go for it Apple!!
Wished I didn’t lock into Verizon, Sprint’s unlimited plan sounds so good!
Just port your number to Sprint and sell the old Verizon iPhone. You’ll likely get enough money to cover the expense of early termination fee and buying a new phone from Sprint.
Late august, early September, late October, late September, mid October…really. This is like a bad Steve Martin skit. We’ll know when apple announces it already!’
Apple needs to stop doing AT&T’s dirty work and make a T-Mobile iPhone. There is less and less competitiveness in the mobile phone provider market and it is starting to hurt the consumer i.e. $20 dollar SMS plans.
just my $0.02
$20 SMS plans are being combatted with iMessage in iOS 5.
That said we definitely need an iPhone on the T-mobile network to ensure competition.
The rumor that the iPhone will be sold by Sprint may be additional evidence that Apple is about to launch a low-cost iPhone with a new iPhone 5. A visit to a Sprint store is a little like standing in line at the California DMV.
I think it would be fair to say that the duopoly pricing, promoted and forced down our throats by both AT&T and Verizon, is about to come to an end. Be prepared for “fair” pricing of unlimited text, voice and data for $59.99. Jumping the gun here, “thank you Sprint!”. Tgank you Steve Jobs
Sigh….looks like an even longer wait for my poor little regional carrier. Oh, well…at least I don’t have a data contract. ;D
If the Obama Administration would get around to approving the ATT & T-Mobile merger, current subscribers to all of the major providers would have access to the iPhone. C’mon, Obama, get it done.
MDN: “The perfect bloodbath is brewing!” It’s not a perfect bloodbath until T-Mobile gets the iPhone.
No T-Mobile huh? That’s gonna make a lot of T-Mo customers a bit mad!
Can they possibly make enough iPhone 5’s to cover a launch this big? I’d been planning on holding off my switch to iPhone until the iPhone 5 launch, but now I’m afraid this is going to be like Nintendo’s Wii launch. I don’t want to have to line up, or wait weeks or months to get my hands on one of these things.
——RM