Reaction to the news has been nuts already. Sprint’s stock (ticker symbol: S) is getting hammered in the stock market with a 13% drop (as of this writing) amidst very heavy volume. Speculations galore as to what will happen next to Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, the state of wireless in the U.S., and so forth. Even though I SHOULD be working on some other projects right now, I couldn’t sit by idly as everyone prophecizes Sprint’s demise. Here are a few knee-jerk thoughts to this news.

• Will the buyout happen? – First, and most importantly, we have to question if this buyout will be allowed to move forward with regulators. That’s a mighty big merger there and getting fairly close to anti-competitive in the market place.
• When will it happen? – Even if this buyout is allowed, we’re talking probably a year or so of regulators scrutinizing the living hell out of this deal, its effect on the market place, how it affects consumers, and so forth. It may have been announced, but it certainly isn’t going to be completed by Father’s Day.
• Will Verizon Buy Sprint Next? – If the AT&T deal is allowed, I still highly doubt a duopoly would be allowed with Verizon buying Sprint. It would be interesting with both GSM (AT& T and T-Mobile) and CDMA (Verizon and Sprint) merging to having just one player in each technology but I really don’t see regulators going for this.
• Competition for Sprint – This one is a toughie. On one hand, it would leave Sprint as the number three carrier behind AT&T and Verizon. On the other hand, it means one less competitor for Sprint to have to deal with. It’s easier to focus your energy on battling two giants than it is two giants and a small player.
• Sprint’s Recent Business – Sprint has turned itself around since bringing on Dan Hesse. Customer defections are down, subscriptions are up, money is flowing in the right direction, customer service has turned around completely. Sprint will continue this trend.
• Sprint Has More Than Cell Phones - Sprint is more than just a company that sells cell phones to customers. They have put loads of energy into growing their M2M (machine to machine) business that brings in revenue without having to deal with customers coming and going on the whim of a new shiny cell phone. Most M2M is used for LBS (location based services) which in itself is a rapidly growing industry. Sprint was smart to prepare for this M2M growth and capitalize on it.

The web is abuzz with this news. I personally think it’s great for Sprint as it lets them focus on less competition and to continue their path that has already been digging them out of the trenches. The knee-jerk market reaction of killing the stock has not gone un-noticed by me (disclaimer: I snagged a few shares today on the news) and I find it quite comical.

CTIA starts tomorrow and there have already been leaks of some awesome new phones that Sprint will have (HTC Evo 3D and Nexus S 4G to name a couple). Let the marketplace go into a frenzy on this news and let them focus on a deal that may or may not happen and watch Sprint carry on with their turn-around plan and bank on everyone’s perception that Sprint will wither on the vine.

I apologize in advance for the brevity and hastiness but that’s what you get with a knee-jerk reaction. Live it…love it.

Enter Samsung. They make good phones…that’s all there is to it. I don’t really think they’re trying to be the best by offering the latest and greatest features, but they’re selling boatloads of phones by still being damn good phones across all carriers.

Samsung’s Galaxy S lineup has been introduced to all four major carriers. Smart move as everyone can have a pretty darn good Samsung phone no matter what carrier they are on.

• Sprint has the Samsung Epic 4G phone (the only 4G in the Galaxy S line)
• AT&T has the Samsung Captivate
• Verizon has the Samsung Fascinate
• T-mobile has the Samsung Vibrant

See what Samsung did here? They created buzz for an entire line and then is allowing everyone, no matter what carrier they are on, to get one. It doesn’t take a business guru to figure out that offering your product to a larger audience will usually lead to higher sales.

Good for you Samsung…thank you for not doing that exclusivity crap that other manufacturers are doing and letting everyone play with your latest and greatest toys.

I’ve touted the goodness of networking before but sometimes feel I must reiterate the power of proper networking and that it can happen at any time, at any place. The following events are from this past weekend (and a more social spin on it can be seen at TheSocialBeast.com) and had this entrepreneur giddier than hell.

It all started with what was supposed to be a quick meeting with a friend who also does promotions who was going to help with setting up the festival and help with getting a local beer distributor involved. We were going to discuss the upcoming Jakestock Festival (June 20 and 21 in Atlanta, celebrating Jake’s Ice Cream’s 10 year anniversary with bands, food, art and other goodness) and what to do. We met at a local bar and started chatting away. He got in touch with a friend that represents Sweetwater Brewery (he’s also a decent music producer if anyone needs that) and I got some insights there. Suddenly I’ve got a couple other friends showing up, one of whom is darn good at doing video work. I started getting everyone tied together and now we’ve got my video guy partnering up with Brass Knuckle Surfer to do a music video. Soon I was talking to another guy who popped up to say hi to my friends and he was telling me about his new venture of offering a culinary treat of Persian/Southern fusion. I totally enjoyed chatting with my new acquaintance and am looking forward to adding him to the list of Jakestock vendors. Awww yeah! And to think…this was just my first stop…

After that we headed to a couple other places…another bar, a BBQ place, chilling with managers, meeting owners, talking about the festival, getting insights on running successful campaigns…all good stuff to know as I take on my first festival.

The networking goodness continued on Sunday evening. While hanging out at a local bar for happy hour I met someone who I found out was a fellow Carnegie Mellon Alumn like myself. We talked about CMU for a while and then ended up talking shop as he was telling me of his company, an open source CRM company. We talked shop about his company, the industry, and everything in between. As I was speaking with him I saw my Persian acquaintance from Friday slide in the bar with his business partner. We talked more about the upcoming festival and then about how his business and my business could help each other out. I live for this!

Let that be a lesson (or a reminder) to us all. You never know who you’ll meet out and about. Keep plenty of business cards handy, be open to discussing anything and everything, never judge a book by its cover, and network your ass off while enjoying yourself with friends. The results can be extraordinary.

So let’s think about this. The iPhone is currently on AT&T’s GSM network. Verizon is currently running on a CDMA network. Both AT&T and Verizon plan on going to LTE for the 4G network, however Verizon plans on taking its time whereas AT&T should implement the new network a bit more quickly.

If Apple is going to let Verizon in on this they’ll have to develop the iPhone to run on yet another network (CDMA). I’ve heard that Apple isn’t so keen on doing this. Yes, Apple will have to do this to move forward with LTE so they’ve already got to redo the guts of the iPhone once…but do they really want to do this twice? Hell, while they’re at it they might as well go to Sprint and do CDMA and then for WiMax, Sprint’s 4G network.

That’s the geeky justification as to why I don’t think Apple is so keen on jumping ship just yet. However the business side of me thinks it would be a great idea for Apple to head on over to Verizon because they’ll have access to a lot more customers (Verizon’s got the largest user base right now).

Soooooo…what will they do? This I ponder.

Seriously people…be HAPPY you can get two million dollars, especially now in this economy. While so many people (save from those AIG execs) make a modest living and live paycheck to paycheck. A few more put in a good day’s work and make a bit more. However, this being the celebrity-crazed, sports-loving, voyeuristic society that we live in, we love to see the football players with their multi-million dollar contracts, the movie stars that make $40 million per movie, the companies that are being run by college kids that are being bought for hundreds of millions. Time to come back to reality…

I was reminded that we need to come back down to earth as I was talking to a friend (and coincidentally a business partner from another company we co-founded and sold off many years ago) about one of his pet projects that we’re about to revitalize. Years ago we parted ways (on a good note of course! no speculation here people…we’re best friends and always will be) as he went off to law school and I continued on with my wily ways. As a Mac user he was having a frustrating time in a PC-centric world of law and education, thus he started up the site Mac Law Students. He was bound and determined to find solutions to his Mac problems (what time tracking software is there for the Mac? How can you take an exam that was designed for PCs? What’s the best solution for…) and report this to other law students who didn’t want to trade in their Macs simply to go to school and practice law. (In a funny random side note, my first real gig out of college was doing support for an IP law firm that was all Mac-based aside from the Netware server here and there). The site became fairly popular but as we all have time constraints he could not continue on with this after graduation. It’s been a while since that decision was made and he decided it’s time to bring it back.

So just what does this all mean? What am I rambling about? I start with billion dollar deals and then move on to a small niche site? Stay with me here…

We  have no illusions that doing this site will make anyone stupid rich. And ya know what? That’s ok. It’s kind of a fun project to work on and could bring some sort of notoriety down the road, but it’s just a fun thing for now that could help fund a hobby or two.

Or could it get bigger? Who knows. I mean, wasn’t that company Apple started in a garage? Did you know the first Apples had a WOODEN case? Or those other little companies (FaceBook, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc) started in dorm rooms or as small things that happened to get big? I believe so.

Not EVERY venture needs millions in seed money just to get off the ground. Take a good idea, some passion, and some hard work and you can succeed. Not only can you succeed, you can go nuts and thrive.

So if you’ve got a good idea that you want to try, just go ahead and do it. Maybe you’ll get rich. Maybe you won’t. However, if you don’t even try there’s a 100% chance you WON’T have something to sell off for a hefty price. At the very least, find something you enjoy doing and then you can have something fun to do. At the upper end you’ve got something you can possibly retire on. Think small and go big.

For those of you who aren’t in the know or only read the big headlines about Sprint Nextel (losing customers, posting losses, blah blah blah) let’s go ahead and put together a quick little list of cool things about Sprint.

1. Amazon’s Kindle zooms around on Sprint’s network
2. Sprint’s network is amazingly fast
3. The Sprint/Clearwire WiMax joint venture is taking off and getting rave reviews. Check out this video (you have to sit through some 3G talk though)
4. Ford plans on putting wireless in their new vehicles
5. Palm’s exclusive agreement with Sprint helps revenues. That Palm Pre is gonna rawk!

Just a few quick things about Sprint that I find notable. Yes, AT&T has the iPhone. Sure, Verizon has a giant network. Sprint though…they’ve got cool stuff. If they can just survive these rough times I think they could have something great to offer us all.

Interestingly enough, Barnes & Noble bought electronic bookseller Fictionwise for $15.7 million last month. Hm…interesting. The writing does seem to be on the wall, yah? The Kindle is expected to have $285 million in sales, giving Amazon a $63 million profit. I can see why Barnes & Noble might find this interesting.

Back to Sprint…this could be a another boost to their revenues and my oh my do they need it. It pains me to see a company with such a fast network struggling so (of course they aren’t guiltless after botching the Nextel merger so badly and having crappy customer support for so long). They’re trying…they really are. I hope it’s not too late for them. With the WiMax deal finally moving forward with Clearwire (and Intel, Time Warner, Comcast and others), the Palm Pre coming out soon, and this rumor of the eBook thing, perhaps they can regain some market share. Since the Kindle already zooms through the air on Sprint’s network it would be quite interesting if Sprint ends up slowly redefining their revenue sources (kind of like how Apple did with the iPod). Hmmmm…interesting.

Aren’t rumors fun?

I find a few things interesting about Cox’s strategies in moving into the cellular marketplace (aside from the obvious tidbit of having a new entry into what seems to be an already saturated and somewhat brutal marketplace). First, I find it interesting that Cox was teaming up with Sprint while building their own network. The interesting thing here is that Sprint’s 4G network is based on WiMax while the network that Cox is building is an LTE network, the same that Verizon and AT&T plan on using for their 4G network. Why not work with them while getting quick entry into the market?

Next, we’re back with the partnerships. Time Warner Cable and Comcast, the other major players in the cable market, are backing Sprint Nextel and Clearwire’s joint venture in the WiMax rollout that has already begun. Again…it seems odd to me that Cox would venture out on their own when they could have power in numbers and also have the ability to learn from the other cable companies as they refine their network and marketing strategy.

It will be an interesting thing to watch unfold. I guess there still are a few areas in technology that have that Wild West feel. Only time will tell to see which technologies win, which companies dominate and how the consumer will be affected by all this.

What will be interesting to see this year is just how the numbers play out. The world economy has been shaken up. The U.S. market is scary, housing is beaten to hell, unemployment rates are scary high, it’s just a rough scene out there. How will that affect Black Friday and Cyber Monday? On one hand, you’d think people would spend less, thus retail sales SHOULD be lower. However, we are in the U.S., a nation of consumers and spenders. Remember what President Bush urged Americans to do after the attacks on 9/11? He urged us to go out and shop. I guess that’s the American thing to do now. So…what WILL happen? Will shoppers be much more thrifty? Or do more comparison shopping? Perhaps shop to take their minds off their current situation?

Me…I’ll be taking it easy. I WANT to buy stuff but I know I shouldn’t. I saw 50″ HDTVs on sale for under $700. Oh how I’d love one of those. But alas…easing my debt load is a bit more pressing right now. Instead, I’ll be watching the markets, seeing if the major retailers can report good numbers and also see how the Internet traffic will be handled. I still chuckle when I hear about systems buckling under the load of Cyber Monday traffic. C’mon people…haven’t we had enough time to practice time and time again and prepare for the increased traffic?

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers and a happy day to everyone else.