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Spint (S) Takes On The Apple (AAPL) iPhone

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The cries of desperation can still be heard from the Sprint (S) headquarters. The company continues to lose money and subscribers. It is now a distant third in the cellular market behind Verzion Wireless and AT&T (T).

Sprint wants to be in the smartphone business because the subscription plans for these handsets tend to bring is big payments. The Apple (AAPL) iPhone and RIM (RIMM) Blackberry are considered the market leaders, but that will not stop Sprint from giving it a try.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Sprint will bring the Samsung Instinct to market soon to see what market share it can take from AT&T.  The phone appears to have excellent features and has a price tag of only $129. In other words, it could do OK.

But, Sprint, which has a reputation of shooting off its own foot, has one hurdle which it cannot overcome. It has the worst customer service in the cellular industry. Some surveys show it has the worst customer service among large US companies no matter what business they are in.

Selling to the high end of the market requires more that having one of the best products. The customers have to like the company selling them

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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