Thursday, September 11, 2014

Sprint Will Prune Products and Segments to Focus on Value, Price Attack

Sprint likely is going to abandon some services or business segments, relatively quickly, as part of Sprint’s effort to supplant T-Mobile US as the price disruptor in the U.S. mobile market.

"In times of turnaround, we will focus on must-haves,” said Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure. “Nice-to-haves will have to go.”

And Claure appears to believe many Sprint currently operates in many such segments where it underperforms, and are not core assets or lines of business, perhaps. “We have an extensive line of nice-to-haves,” Claure said.

Moving fast, Claure appears to have looked quickly to an audience he understands very well, Sprint dealers. What he heard quickly convinced him that the “Framily” shared data plan was not resonating with consumers.

"Dealers said it was hard to sell,” Claure said. “We are marketing a hamster talking to people."

The big problem was that the plan was more expensive than plans offered by the other three national providers, with a consumer experience perceived as less desirable.

The new Family Share Pack offers a simple value proposition: more data for less money. Sprint’s value brand Boost also moved quickly to adopt the same posture for consumers preferring prepaid services.  

And while disclosing no specific numbers, Sprint’s new price attack is working, Claure said. Even after a short period of literally weeks since revamping pricing, Sprint has seen some days when it gained net customers, instead of losing them.

“Value” appears to be key, as Sprint has been emphasizing.  "We are now the disrupters in the industry," Claure said.

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