It looked, for a moment there, like Apple was riding to the rescue at Sprint. Yesterday, the telecommunications company reported a smaller loss than expected in the first quarter. It sold 1.5m iPhones in its second quarter of offering the device, and some 660,000 of those went to new customers. The stock spiked 7 per cent in early trading. A slightly harder look reveals that growth remains dull at Sprint – which, combined with greyish first-quarter results from AT&Tand Verizon, paint a dreary picture of the US telecoms industry. Sprint’s namesake wireless brand did add 263,000 postpaid customers in the first quarter. But that is an expansion of less than 1 per cent. And if you add in Sprint’s rotting Nextel brand, postpaid subscribers fell by 192,000.
有那麼一瞬間，彷彿蘋果(Apple)正出手解救Sprint公司一樣。該電信公司昨日公佈一季度報告，虧損略低於預期。在它銷售蘋果iPhone手機的第二個季度中，銷售量達150萬部，其中66萬部由新客戶購買。其股價在早盤飆升了7%。但仔細觀察發現，Sprint的成長仍較平淡，這與美國其它兩家營運商AT&T和Verizon在第一季度的沉悶業績一起，描繪出美國電信業的不景氣畫面。Sprint的同名無線品牌確實在第一季度爲其新增了26.3萬後付費客戶。但這一擴張還不到1%。如果算上Sprint旗下糟糕的Nextel品牌，則後付費客戶數量減少了19.2萬。