Sprint has sent out notifications for a special Product Announcement, very much in the same fashion as Verizon Wireless did. This announcement will be held in New York on February 7th in the evening, just a few days before the release of the Verizon iPhone. Speculation has already started on this one and a report from PC World seems to lay out the case as to why the iPhone may be coming to Sprint. Others are considering the same possibility.
The Verizon iPhone rumor was huge and reported widely. Now that it has been announced, the let down has occurred and there is the wait for the actual ability to purchase the phone. One very interesting comment in the article is “that Verizon does not have an exclusive deal with Apple on the CDMA iPhone”, which would tend to indicate that another wireless carrier using the CDMA protocol could use and sell the same iPhone that Verizon is going to be selling. With that information, one wonders if the coming announcement next month could be for a Sprint iPhone.
This would contradict previous rumors that Verizon had negotiated an exclusive arrangement with Apple to be the only carrier to add the iPhone for a period of time. For Apple, it should be important to address the growing Android phones and the continuing reports of Android starting to beat them on more and more reports. By expanding to multiple carriers, they could more than likely reduce the growth of the Android phones by giving customers another option to chose from. All of this comes without the expected unnamed source, so you can see this as pure speculation in a void of information.
The Sprint iPhone rumor has very little substance to it and the announcement could be a tablet or Android phone announcement. Sprint has been working for years to improve services and their reputation and has come a long way. What ever they announce needs to be something which will bring customers to them and increase their revenue. With plans to significantly expand and rework their network, keeping their existing customers and bringing in new ones is very important in light of the Verizon iPhone announcement this week.
