Sprint CEO Resigns/Fired

Sprint announced Monday (Oct.8) that they will miss previously provided guidance of $11.0 to $11.5 billion of adjusted OIBDA and $41 to $42 billion of consolidated operating revenue and expects to report a net loss of approximately 337,000 post-paid subscribers in the third quarter. Oh and CEO Gary Forsee is stepping down as the company's chairman, president and chief executive officer (CEO), effective immediately. Check out the press release.

A lot has been written about this move by analysts and the common theme is that Sprint needs to re-evaluate the Xohm/4G/WiMAX effort. Many analysts feel that spending $5billion on a new network with an "unproven" technology is not a wise decision for a struggling wireless company. I for one feel that scaling back or shutting down the Xohm effort is a bad choice. Xohm has the potential to separate Sprint from it's competition and establish it as the technology leader in the mobile wireless broadband segment, which doesn't exist today. To stall or slow down Xohm is very short-sighted. The wireless phone market has all but reached it's saturation point, so a growth company would be wise to move to the next great thing. Intel has designed new chip sets for the Mobile Internet Device, Google is working on a new Mobile OS or OS standard for Linux mobile devices. Imagine if Palm, Google, HTC, and Intel all worked together to create this new line of devices that provide MP3, PMP, GPS, Phone, and enterprise application support. It's basically a cross between an UMPC and a PMP in size with maybe a 3 in wide touch screen with a slide out qwerty. The possibilities are endless for something in this space. If I can leave my laptop and smartphone at home and utilize an MID with bluetooth and voice service? Why wouldn't I do that?

I just hope that whomever the Sprint board finds to fill the CEO position does not chop things up, but takes a long hard look at all the assets within the portfolio and then makes decisions based on the future not just based on the past or present time. Only AT&T and Verizon have an equal set of assets.