Gadget Reviews, Product News, Electronic Gadgets

Sprint iPhone 5 Not a Surprise, But a Sprint iPhone 4 Is

Smartphone users and the tech media have been calling for Sprint to pick up the iPhone 5 for a long time now. But what few ever considered is that they could start selling the iPhone 4 as well.
It would seem that WSJ.com confirmed late yesterday what many have been calling for and predicting for months — that Sprint, America’s third-largest mobile carrier, would indeed offer the iPhone 5 to its subscribers this year. Back in early February, the iPhone 5 News Blog made its first case for the Sprint iPhone 5, arguing the benefits of Sprint’s value-leading services and prices. We also reported in April how Sprint’s Chief Financial Officer Robert Brust said of the iPhone 5 in May of 2010 that “we’d love to have it,” and how this seemingly innocuous comment was actually a strong, public message being sent to Apple: we’re ready to partner with you.
Most recently, in our August 4th article, “The iPhone 5 Cometh To Sprint,” we called it.
What we didn’t call, however, is that Sprint is due to get not only the iPhone 5, but the iPhone 4 as well. From a technology standpoint, making the iPhone 4 available on Sprint’s network is no big deal, seeing as they use the same CDMA standard as Verizon. it is simply a matter of changing the Verizon logos over to Sprint, and perhaps a few other production changes that are certainly doable. But from a business standpoint, the prospect of Sprint selling the iPhone 4 as well as the iPhone 5 seemed implausible, based on what we’ve seen transpire between Apple and Verizon, with the latter getting the iPhone 4 but not the 3Gs.
Granted, the decision to not extend the 3Gs to Verizon was probably the result of production and supply issues, since Apple would have had to redesign the 3Gs to be CDMA-compatible, just as they had to do — at their own expense — with the Verizon iPhone 4. This time around, however, Apple already has a CDMA version of the iPhone 4 in production, so handing it off to Sprint is remarkably easier for Apple.
That being said, if Sprint lands both the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5, it would appear that Apple and Sprint have forged a strong working relationship in the shadows of the big duopoly that is AT&T and Verizon. And considering that Sprint already leads the mobile market in pricing and value, the combination of a value-priced iPhone 4 with Sprint’s blissful unlimited data plan will make the third-largest carrier highly competitive in the iPhone market.
It is possible that Verizon will have much to fear from Sprint’s inclusion in the iPhone market, since it can be argued that Sprint offers a comparable overall product to Verizon, but at lower prices. Early iPhone 4 adopters on Verizon’s network might consider jumping to Sprint for the iPhone 5 to take advantage of unlimited data in the event that iCloud turns out to be a data guzzler. All in all, we’ve argued here on the blog that a Sprint iPhone 5 will be beneficial even to iPhone users on AT&T and Verizon, with Sprint keeping the big two carriers honest with their data pricing.

This post was written by: Irfan Jam

Irfan Jam is a professional blogger, web designer and front end web developer. Follow him on Facebook