Now that most people have a cell phone and once-heady growth in the industry is slowing, analysts say carriers are going to be looking at buying each other to increase their scale and to avoid competing too much on price. Consumers have been benefiting from relentless price-cutting on cell phone service in the past few [...]

The acquisition announced Tuesday calls for Sprint to pay $5.50 in stock for each Virgin Mobile share. Sprint already owned 13.1 percent of Virgin Mobile, which uses Sprints network to offer service.
The offer comes at a 31 percent premium to Virgin Mobiles closing share price Monday of $4.21. In early trading Tuesday, the shares rose [...]

The third-largest U.S. phone company agreed to pay $5.50 a share to public shareholders of Virgin Mobile, whose biggest investor is U.K. billionaire Richard Bransons Virgin Group. Sprint gains 5.25 million users, expanding a prepaid unit that has added customers while its contract unit has lost them.
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People began lining up outside Sprint stores in New York, Boston and Cherry Hill, New Jersey, at 5 p.m. yesterday. Sprint, which has trained staff for weeks and held promotional events with the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, may sell almost 200,000 phones this weekend, some analysts estimate.
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Sprint, which will carry the Pre exclusively at least through the end of the year, lost 1.25 million of its valuable contracted subscribers during the first three months of the year – even worse than the 1.1 million that fled to other wireless carriers in the fourth quarter.
Hesse said the Pre gives Sprint an opportunity [...]

Investors responded by sending shares of the nations third-largest wireless provider up sharply. Sprint shares gained 53 cents, or 11.4 percent, to $5.20 in afternoon trading after reaching as high as $5.48 earlier in the session.
The Overland Park, Kan.-based company lost $594 million, or 21 cents per share, during the three months ending March 31, [...]

Thats a change from recent years, when flashy new phones and data services hogged the spotlight. This year, the developments have been more appropriate for a recession: People who are least able to pay are getting cheaper service.
In traditional prepaid service, which generally has been marketed to people with iffy credit, customers buy minutes in [...]

Even so, Sprint Nextels condition has been so poor that investors were able to seize on news that wasnt as bad as usual. Sprints adjusted loss beat Wall Street expectations, and the company predicted fewer customer losses in the coming year. That sent Sprint shares soaring 54 cents, or 20 percent, to end at $3.25.
During [...]

Even so, Sprint Nextels condition has been so poor that investors were able to seize on news that wasnt as bad as usual. Sprints adjusted loss beat Wall Street expectations, and the company predicted fewer customer losses in the coming year. That sent Sprint shares soaring 50 cents, or 18 percent, to $3.21 in afternoon [...]

On Tuesday, Citi Investment Research analyst Mark Mahaney offered an educated guess – that Amazon sold 500,000 Kindles last year. That is higher than his previous expectation of 380,000.
Mahaney bases his latest estimate in part on a regulatory filing from Sprint Nextel Corp., which is a key player since the Kindle downloads books wirelessly over [...]