Sprint CFO: HTC EVO Can Take on iPhone 4
In a not-so-surprising statement made at a Sprint investor conference yesterday, Sprint’s CFO Robert Brust believes that the HTC EVO 4G can keep up with the launch of the iPhone 4 when it hits AT&T later this month. He calls the state of the industry (for competitors, anyway) “iPhone introduction” trauma whenever Apple drops their yearly eggs all into the AT&T basket in June/July.
Our hope is that we won’t lose as many customers this year as we have in the past.
It’s really refreshing to hear a higher-up not pretend as if they have no competition and as if they’re untouchable. He cites AT&T’s network problems (and the bad reputation that came right along with it over the past few years) as one of the reasons why the EVO 4G will remain attractive throughout iPhone frenzy.
Other factors include tiered data plans with not much more value than customers have already been getting. Combined with the expectation that AT&T will be getting a data-heavy iPad 3G, it’s clear to see why service and cost alone would turn several thousand people away from AT&T for the iPhone.
Not only focusing on AT&T’s woes, Sprint’s touting their own benefits: cheaper (and, for now, unlimited) plans, a self-proclaimed more reliable and faster network, and a device that can truly go toe-to-toe with what Apple’s bringing to the table. Sprint has a good reason to be confident in their ability to hold up against AT&T if their EVO launch-day performance is anything to go by (even if those numbers ended up being slightly wrong).
[via CNet]