A Hail Mary for Sprint

Because Sprint now sells iphones (as of 10/1/11), its bottom line will take a hit. The extra subsidy cost of selling an iphone to an existing Sprint customer (rather than a Droid phone) is $100. Based on data from Verizon and AT&T it takes about a 12 months for any earnings benefit to show up. But, as Sprint has lower margins than A and V, it will probably take till 2014 for new iphone customers to become net revenue positive.