Sprint CEO on iPhone: “We Made the Right Decision”

Reporting second-quarter earnings Thursday morning, Sprint said it sold nearly 1.5 million iPhones during the period, a number that was essentially unchanged from last quarter. More important, 40 percent of those iPhones went to customers new to the carrier’s network.

And that’s more than you can say for AT&T and Verizon. Both companies sold far more iPhones than Sprint — AT&T sold 3.6 million; Verizon, 2.7 million — but they sold fewer of them than in the quarter prior. And they didn’t sell as many to customers new to their networks. Indeed, just a quarter of Verizon’s iPhone sales and 22 percent of AT&Ts were to new customers.

So, while Sprint’s $15 billion bet on the iPhone might be a costly one, it also seems to be paying off. Certainly that’s the opinion of CEO Dan Hesse.

“We are beginning to see benefits from the iPhone,” Hesse said during Sprint’s earnings call this morning. “Early life churn is better than on other smartphones, calls to care are significantly lower than on other devices, service and repair and returns are all lower than on other devices. All the important early metrics indicate we made the right decision. … We are ahead of the pace to meet our contracted commitments to Apple.”