Despite the Pre, Sprint loses 991,000 post-paid subscribers in the second quarter

Despite launching one of the most anticipated handsets since the first-gen iPhone, Sprint reported a net loss of 991,000 post-paid subscribers during the second quarter. For the period, the pin-dropping network lost $384 million dollars while ringing up $8.1 billion in sales. Including pre-paid subscribers, the carrier lost a total of 257,000 net subscribers for the three months, bringing the total amount of customers to 48.8 million. That is good enough for third place in the U.S., behind Verizon and AT&T, but ahead of T-Mobile.

The Pre was launched on June 6th, so the quarter's results are affected by sales of the device for only a few weeks of the period. A better test of how much the Pre will help Sprint might be the current quarter now that all of the hoopla has died down, and the phone has had a chance to entrench itself in the carrier's lineup. One real concern for Sprint is that Verizon has just announced that they will be offering the Pre starting early next year. If the carrier could not add post-paid subscribers with the exclusive rights in the U.S. to a device that many consider the first real competition for the iPhone, what will happen when the nation's leading networker-with a customer base that has been hungry for a true CDMA iPhone challenger-gets its' hands on the Pre?

source: Sprint via BGR