Edible Apple

Sprint Nextel this past quarter reported losses of $847 million, or $0.28 a share. At the root of Sprint’s monetary troubles is its inability to attract new subscribers and keep the one’s it has – though during the quarter gone by they did manage to snag more new subscribers than AT&T.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Sprint, without an iPhone, is struggling to keep in sight of larger rivals such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T, both of whom are selling mad amounts of the Apple device. And the playing field will get more challenging if AT&T succeeds in acquiring Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. T-Mobile business. Sprint is leading the fight against the proposed merger.

While Sprint added 1.1 million net new customers in the quarter, analysts fret about the level of leakage. The company said it lost 101,000 contracts during the quarter. Sprint cited the dreaded iPhone, including very cheap older models of the phone, as a big reason for customer defections.

As Apple’s commercials imply, there’s only one iPhone. Just as SoftBank in Japan about how the iPhone helped them increase profits by almost 500%.

But Spring users toying with the idea of defecting might want to stay put, at least for now. Rumor has it that when Apple announces its next-gen iPhone, presumably sometime in mid-August, it will also announce that its iconic phone will finally be coming to Sprint.

Back in May, Apple posted a job posting (since removed) looking for a carrier engineer to work very close to Sprint’s homebase in Overland Park, Kansas. Following that, a report from early June relayed that a Sprint optimized iPhone was currently in the advanced testing stages at Apple where Sprint compatible cell towers were already in active use – similar to how Apple finalized testing with its CDMA iPhone with Verizon many months back.

Moreover, the rumor indicated that the iPhone was also “making the rounds amongst Sprint’s rsearch and development department.”

Yep, if you don’t have an iPhone…