Technology Industry

Amid the Facebook move to block Google’s Friend Connect, the search giant has responded.

As expected, Google had a few issues with Facebook’s privacy assessment of Google Friend Connect. There’s a lot of debate on Techmeme about the issue and it’s a big one as all of these companies are wrestling over social data portability. Since most of these data portability efforts aren’t out of the press release stage, the verbal jousting isn’t all that surprising.

Robert Scoble thinks Facebook has a point. Others are on Google’s side. Add it up we have a Google said, Facebook said situation. Here’s the reaction from Google’s press folks verbatim.

We’re disappointed that Facebook disabled their users’ ability to use Friend Connect with their Facebook friends. We want to help you understand a bit more about what’s going on on the Friend Connect side with respect to users’ information.

User privacy is of the utmost importance, and Friend Connect was designed to strongly preserve it. The larger issue here is users’ control of their data. People find the relationships they’ve built on social networks really valuable, and they want the option of bringing those friends with them elsewhere on the web. Google Friend Connect is designed to keep users fully in control of their information at all times. Users choose what social networks to link their Friend Connect account to. (They can just as easily unlink it.) We never handle passwords from other sites, we never store social graph data from other sites, and we never pass users’ social network IDs to Friend Connected sites or applications.

For example, here’s what an application running on a Friend Connected site can access about a user, Joe, who has linked in his hi5 account:

7547238438 joe [picture] 9438265867 8348357012

Translation: Not much. A third party app has access to:
- Your Google Friend Connect ID. This is a number. It is not a name, and it is not your hi5 ID.
- Your friendly name that you entered into Friend Connect (or from hi5 if you didn’t).
- Your photo. And only if you’ve chosen to make that photo public on hi5.
- The Google Friend Connect IDs of any of your hi5 friends who are also members of this site. (NOT all of your hi5 friends. Not their hi5 IDs.)

That’s it. These apps have no knowledge of who these friends are. They have no access to additional profile data — yours or your friends’. No idea who else is on your friends list on your social network.

From here I have to dig in on each step along the data portability chain to see what the real deal is. At a high level, it’s a walled garden scrum.

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

Credit: ZDNet

Apple’s iPhone will be headed to a few more countries courtesy of a new deal with French telecom carrier Orange.

In a statement, Orange said:

Orange today announced a new agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to Orange customers in Austria, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland and Orange’s African markets later this year.

The Orange announcement follows deals with Vodafone and Rogers Communications. According to the Associated Press, Orange has exclusive iPhone deals in Belgium and Romania and co-exclusive or non-exclusive deals in the other countries.

Meanwhile, America Movil, a Mexican wireless carrier, said May 7 that it will bring the iPhone to Latin America. The America Movil deal gives the iPhone exposure to 159 million subscribers.

Apple has sold 5.4 million iPhones through March and these international pacts should give the company enough exposure to hit its 10 million unit goal. Considering that Apple is more than halfway to its shipment target with a 3G iPhone brewing and a bevy of international deals the 10 million unit goal may be an easy mark.

While these incremental deals certainly add to the potential iPhone units Apple can sell, the big news will come when the company reaches a pact with China Mobile. According to Piper Jaffray, a pact with China Mobile would expose the iPhone to more than 369 million subscribers.

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

Credit: ZDNet

Yahoo filed its internal communications about Carl Icahn’s proxy war plans with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The takeaway: Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has been writing a lot of emails.

To senior vice presidents at Yahoo, Yang delivered a few talking points following Icahn’s first volley and the company’s response (Techmeme).

Here’s the full text of that letter:

To: all-svps-and-above@yahoo-inc.com
From: Jerry
Subject: our response to carl icahn

leaders,

as you know, carl icahn today announced his intention to nominate 10 directors to take control of our board of directors at our 2008 annual meeting.

this afternoon we issued our response to mr. icahn and are sending an email to all employees updating them on these recent developments. a copy of our response, including the letter to mr. icahn, is attached. i urge you to read it.

as we outline in our letter, we believe our independent board has more than demonstrated the fact that it has the knowledge, experience and commitment to maximize value for all yahoo! stockholders.

i will be scheduling a call with you soon. in the meantime please find below some talking points for you to use with your teams.
jerry

And Yahoo’s talking points:

• Carl Icahn today announced his intention to nominate 10 directors to take control of our board of directors at our 2008 annual meeting.
• We believe much of what Mr. Icahn said today reflects a significant misunderstanding of the facts about how hard our independent board has worked—and continues to work—to maximize stockholder value. We believe our independent board has the knowledge, experience and commitment to maximize value for all Yahoo! stockholders.
• Soon, we will file preliminary proxy materials with the SEC that will describe the matters to be voted on at the annual meeting, including the Company’s nominees for election to our board of directors, and the board’s recommendation. Once those materials are cleared by the SEC, we will mail them to our stockholders.
• Stockholders, as equity owners of the Company, have the ability to nominate one or more directors for election to the board at the Company’s annual meeting as long as they comply with the notice requirements contained in our bylaws. Under our bylaws, today was the last day that a stockholder could nominate a candidate for director.

To employees, Yang’s message was keep your heads down and stay focused.

Here’s the full text:

To: all-worldwide@yahoo-inc.com
From: Jerry
Subject: today’s news

yahoos,

today carl icahn announced his intent to nominate a slate of ten directors to take control of our board of directors at this year’s annual meeting. we sent him a letter in response, which we made public in a press release. i’m attaching a copy of that press release, including the full text of our letter, and you should read it carefully.

we always want to hear the views of our stockholders, but you should know that mr. icahn’s letter reflects a significant misunderstanding of the facts about the microsoft proposal and the diligence with which our board evaluated and responded to that proposal. we believe our board has the independence, knowledge, experience and commitment to maximize value for all of our stockholders. yahoo! is a great company with a truly unique set of highly-valuable assets that is growing, profitable and executing well on its strategic plan to enhance our leadership position in online advertising. our solid results for the first quarter of 2008 are a testament to this.

today’s events will undoubtedly draw a lot of media attention and there will be lots of speculation about what happens next for yahoo!. i ask all of you to put aside the rumors and speculation and stay focused on the business at hand and what we do best — transforming the online experiences of our users, advertisers, publishers and developers.

i know you all have a lot of questions and so i’ve also attached some faqs that will address some of your questions. as we’ve said before we’ll do our best to continue to update you as new information becomes available. thank you again for your continued hard work as we work together to make yahoo! a stronger leader in the online marketplace and an even better company.

jerry

And those internal FAQs:

Can stockholders nominate directors to the board?
Stockholders, as equity owners of the Company, have the ability to nominate one or more directors for election to a board at the Company’s annual meeting as long as they comply with the requirements contained in our bylaws. Under our bylaws, today was the last day that a stockholder could nominate a candidate for director.

How long will all this take?
We can’t speculate on how events will develop at this time, but we plan to hold our annual meeting in a couple of months. I’d ask all of you to stay focused on the business at hand and what we do best — transforming the experiences of our users, advertisers, publishers and developers, all while enhancing our leadership position in the online marketplace.

What’s our next step?
We will file preliminary proxy materials with the SEC that will describe the matters to be voted on, including the Company’s nominees for election to the board, and the board’s recommendation. Once those materials are cleared by the SEC, we will mail them to our stockholders.

In the meantime, we should remain focused on doing what we do best — transforming the experiences of our users, advertisers, publishers and developers, all while enhancing our leadership position in the online marketplace.

We will continue to update you as information becomes available but please remember that we are subject to various legal restrictions on what we can say and when we can say it.

What can employees do?
We ask you to continue to put aside all rumors and speculation you may be hearing. None of us should allow external reports to shift our focus away from doing what we do best — transforming the experiences of our users, advertisers, publishers and developers, all while enhancing our leadership position in the online marketplace.

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

Credit: ZDNet

Flextronics will install Workday’s on-demand human capital management software for 200,000 employees.

According to InformationWeek, Workday beat out SAP and Oracle for Flextronics business in what Mary Hayes Weier described as tipping point deal for SaaS. Workday also won a 26,000 employee deal with Chiquita.

InformationWeek quotes Flextronics CIO David Smoley:

“HR should be simple. When you look at the usability of Workday it’s a natural compared with traditional vendors that make it incredibly complex to implement and make changes.”

So what about this tipping point? Two thoughts: First, the Flextronics deal is clearly a tipping point for Workday, the brainchild of former PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield. In fact, Workday really resembles PeopleSoft in its early days. PeopleSoft specialized in HR and financials. So does Workday. The founding father is the same person. And both companies had good timing as they were founded just in time for a shift in the software model.

Vinnie Mirchandani outlines the Duffield magic:

If you have met Dave, you know he is genial, very untypical of a tech zillionaire. Someone who strives hard to live up to his initials - DAD. Still gets nervous before a speech. But underneath it all, there is a competitive streak.

As for the second takeaway it’s clear that SaaS is moving upstream to large companies. Salesforce.com has increasingly been landing big companies as customers. And for categories that don’t offer competitive advantage like HR and CRM SaaS makes a lot of sense.

Bob Warfield explains:

(The Workday deal) is a definite shot to the On-premise wheelhouse. Given that it’s a Human Capital Management deal, it’s also kind of a shot in the wheelhouse for the other SaaS HCM vendors like Taleo and SuccessFactors. The system replaces 80 disparate HR systems deployed in 30 countries. This is the kind of job SaaS is ideal for. Getting through such a blizzard of legacy systems takes some real streamlining if you’re going to live to tell of the story. The savings potential on such projects is enormous, but the risks around a conventional On-premise install are what led to the phrase “boiling the ocean”. Choosing SaaS minimizes that risk.

What remains to be seen is whether ERP suites go SaaS. But it’s probably just a matter of time before SaaS becomes a viable alternative for other enterprise apps. There’s a reason SAP is building an on-demand ERP suite.

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations. Credit: ZDNet.

Dell said Wednesday that it is designing its laptops and desktops to consume up to 25 percent less energy by 2010 compared to today.

Welcome to the latest in the “we’re greener than you” game where green technology intersects with marketing-speak. Green IT is fashionable, but increasingly borders on marketing mumbo jumbo. The hint that we’re in a green marketing war was dropped in the second paragraph of Dell’s statement:

The company’s laptops and desktops, already among the industry’s most energy-efficient, are being designed to consume up to 25 percent less energy by 2010 relative to systems offered today. This is in contrast to Hewlett-Packard’s announcement earlier this year relative to its 2005 offerings. The energy efficiency of Dell OptiPlex desktops has improved nearly 50 percent since 2005, while Latitude laptops have improved 16 percent since 2006.

Also see: GreenTech Pastures

There’s a good reason for this pitch: Being green can save you dough on your energy bill. And perhaps the greenest hardware company nails more sales. The problem: These dueling green pitches get old quick. And as vendors quibble over metrics and stretched statistics it’s more likely that customers will just tune these things out. Dell said it’ll hit its goal by integrating more efficient circuit designs, fans and power management features. Won’t all hardware makers adopt better power management tools and more efficient components? It’s a good bet that all desktop and notebooks will be 25 percent more energy-efficient by 2010.

Instead, we get all of these green technology announcements that blur together. HP also said it will cut the energy consumption in desktops and notebooks by 25 percent by 2010.

Dell hits you over the head with its green pitch:

Based on worldwide unit sales beginning in 2005 with power-management features enabled, Dell estimates that OptiPlex desktop systems alone have helped customers save more than $2.4 billion and avoid approximately 23 million tons of CO2.

Can CO2 emissions become part of your ROI case? Probably not, but power management tools may. And that’s why vendors are yapping about their energy efficiency plans so much.

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations. Credit: ZDNet.

The LiMo Foundation, a consortium that is building an open software platform for handsets based on Linux, has added Mozilla and Verizon to its roster

The full roster of partners added today includes:

• Infineon Technologies;
• Kvaleberg AS;
• Mozilla Corporation;
• Red Bend Software;
• Sagem Mobiles;
• SFR;
• SK Telecom;
• And Verizon Wireless.

Of those recent additions Mozilla and Verizon Wireless are the most interesting (Techmeme). Mozilla is obviously pondering mobile applications via its browser. But Verizon is the big win. LiMo, which features a middleware heavy approach compared to Google’s Android and Open Handset Alliance, now has a large U.S. carrier on board. LiMo’s carrier partners–NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone and Orange are all based abroad.

Also see: LiMo: New members added; First release on deck; Is the future about mobile middleware?

• First batch of LiMo mobile Linux devices readied for battle against Microsoft, Nokia
• In LiMo-Android battle the winner is Linux
• LiMo debuts first mobile Linux platform amid steep competition

The addition of Verizon Wireless could expose LiMo to more than 67 million subscribers.

While LiMo is portrayed as a competitor to Android it really is a different animal. In an interview earlier this year, Morgan Gillis, executive director of LiMo, said his foundation is focused on the software that runs underneath the user interface. Why? Carriers increasingly want to tweak the user interface and are wary of giving any one party–whether it is the Open Handset Alliance or Windows Mobile–too much power. The UI is seen as the differentiator.

Reading between the lines, Verizon’s move to join LiMo may indicate that it expects to customize its UI more in the future.

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations. Credit: ZDNet.

MySpace won statutory damages of more than $230 million against spammers Stanford Wallace and Walter Rines, but the big question is whether this ruling–delivered in the Federal District Court in Los Angeles–will act as a deterrent.

To be sure, MySpace’s win (see court order PDF) has some eye-popping figures (good luck collecting that sum). Wallace and Rines worked together to create MySpace accounts, swipe passwords and then spam users. MySpace reckons that the duo sent as many as 735,925 messages. The award is the largest under the CAN-SPAM Act.

Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace’s chief security officer, said in a statement:

“MySpace has zero tolerance for those who attempt to act illegally on our site.  The Federal District Court in Los Angeles awarded MySpace $233,777,500 under the federal CAN-SPAM Act and $1,500,000 under the California anti-phishing statute. User engagement is up 32 percent year over year while spam is significantly decreasing, proving efforts like this are working.  We thank the court for serving justice upon defendants Wallace and Rines and we remain committed to punishing those who violate the law and try to harm our members.”

The hope here is that this big award will act as a deterrent. However, that’s unclear. Wallace and Rines obviously aren’t taking the matter seriously. Both failed to show up for the court hearing. Meanwhile, Wallace, known as the Spam King, led a spam outfit called Cyber Promotions. He has lost lawsuits to ISPs and has wound up in a spyware case that led to a $4 million federal judgment against him in 2006, according to the Associated Press. Wallace has seen injunctions before yet the spam keeps coming.

Add it up and Wallace owes almost a quarter of a billion greenbacks. He doesn’t seem to be sweating it much.

This award is a lot like those big NFL contracts with nice round numbers, say $60 million over 5 years. They make for great headlines, but the reality never matches the contract. The problem: Those contracts aren’t guaranteed and most players don’t collect the whole sum. In other words, MySpace’s win makes for a nice headline, but until Wallace either pays up or lands in jail the risk-reward equation remains in his favor.

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations. Credit: ZDNet.

Updated: Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd said Tuesday he plans to use a familiar playbook to integrate Electronic Data Systems: Leverage scale, squeeze costs — and underpromise and overdeliver.

“We’re running the playbook we know how to run very well,” said Hurd, on a conference call with analysts. “We know how to get significant leverage out of our scale. We spent double-digit thousands of hours on the due diligence and planning. This thing (EDS) is very attractive. We didn’t bake in a lot of revenue synergies, but they are there.”

On Tuesday, HP officially announced that it is buying Electronic Data Systems for $25 a share, or about $12.8 billion (Techmeme). HP put an enterprise value of $13.9 billion on the deal, which will more than double HP’s services revenue.

Hurd’s bet: That he can run EDS–a company that has had flattish revenue growth since 2000–better. When questioned about EDS execution, Hurd noted that the company had done a lot of heavy lifting on its long-term restructuring. “If we do get the cost synergies done–and we will–we think this thing has tremendous opportunity,” said Hurd, who indicated that HP will get its synergies and deliver revenue growth with EDS.

Overall, Wall Street analysts were skeptical about the EDS purchase. What was truly stunning is that analysts weren’t budging from their skepticism given that Hurd is a Wall Street favorite. Analysts asked Hurd why HP didn’t acquire a smaller offshore player.

Among the EDS deal details:

• The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2008.
• HP will create a new business group called EDS, an HP company. EDS will remain in Plano, Texas and be lead by current EDS CEO Ronald Rittenmeyer, who will report to Mark Hurd.
• HP will be the second largest IT services provider.
• HP said the transaction will be accretive to fiscal 2009 non-GAAP earnings and accretive to 2010 GAAP earnings. “Significant synergies are expected as a result of the combination,” the company said.
• HP will pay for EDS with cash and new debt.

Also see: HP’s bid for EDS: Opportunity costs loom

• EDS internal memo on the HP purchase
•  HP’s to-do list following EDS acquisition
• Dana Gardner: HP-EDS and offloading IT to the cloud(s)
• Dennis Howlett: Does this acquisiton make sense?

“We will be a strong business partner,” said Hurd, who on a conference call said the deal is important strategically and financially. Hurd also said he was confident that HP could execute on the integration of EDS and deliver savings and efficiencies.

HP and EDS executives played up the complementary nature of the two businesses (click for full slide):

Other key points from the conference call:

• Opsware will play a big role automating EDS and HP operations. EDS had been Opsware’s biggest customer.
• Rittenmeyer said the deal will push EDS’ zero outage initiative to a “new level”.
• There is very little overlap between the two companies, said Hurd.
• “EDS had a strong applications outsourcing business and frankly we didn’t,” said Hurd.
• Analysts were skeptical about HP’s opportunity costs related to the EDS deal.
• Analysts questioned the value of EDS and noted that many of its employees were based in the U.S. Rittenmeyer challenged that assessment and noted that many EDS customers are in federal, state and local government and can’t use offshore resources.
• HP didn’t discuss layoffs after the EDS deal, but Hurd said operating profits could be improved. That’s a hint that there may be some workforce restructuring ahead.

To allay any concerns about the EDS deal, HP upped its second quarter outlook and fiscal 2008 guidance (statement). The company said second quarter earnings were 80 cents a share and 87 cents excluding items. Revenue for the second quarter was $28.3 billion, up from $25.5 billion a year ago. Wall Street was expecting earnings of 84 cents a share, according to Thomson Financial.

For the third quarter, HP projected revenue between $27.3 billion and $27.4 billion with non-GAAP earnings between 82 cents a share and 83 cents a share. GAAP earnings will be 76 cents a share to 77 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting third quarter earnings of 82 cents a share.

HP projected fiscal 2008 revenue between $114.2 billion and $114.4 billion with earnings of $3.30 to $3.34, up from its previous range of $3.26 a share to $3.30. Non-GAAP earnings are projected to be $3.54 a share to $3.58, up from its $3.50 to $3.54 range. Wall Street was expecting $3.52 a share.

While EDS boosts HP’s services business dramatically, the company still has some holes to fill. This chart tells the tale:

Next up for HP may be a few business process outsourcing acquisitions.

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations. Credit: ZDNet.

HP acquired EDS in a deal valued roughly at $12.8 billion. The move was outlined Tuesday morning amid a healthy dose of skepticism. Here’s a memo from EDS CEO Ron Rittenmeyer, who will now report to HP CEO Mark Hurd.

To the EDS Worldwide Team:

Today is a historic day for the future of all of us at EDS, our valued clients, our shareholders and the entire IT industry. EDS and HP have reached a definitive agreement for HP to purchase EDS.

This transaction would be the largest ever in the IT services market and would create a formidable global competitor. EDS would join the world’s largest technology company. HP enjoys a well-respected global brand and broad worldwide resources – along with a strong operational background.

When the transaction is completed, which is expected in the second half of the year, HP will establish a new business group and brand it EDS – an HP company.

Importantly, EDS would retain the brand all of you have worked so hard to build over the last 45 years. EDS headquarters will remain in Plano and I plan to continue as chairman, president and CEO of this new business group.

Obviously, this news means major changes for everyone involved. There are many questions to be answered and decisions to be made in the coming months. Ensuring a successful integration is our top priority.

What doesn’t change, however, is EDS’ commitment to provide excellent service for our clients. And, we will relentlessly pursue new business while continuing to build the best delivery process in our industry. The core values of EDS are shared by HP, which makes this even more of a winning combination.

In the weeks ahead, I promise to communicate often with you about milestones and decisions affecting our company and our careers. We will thoughtfully manage this entire transition process – just as EDS and HP have done for many other companies we have each acquired.

To begin the dialogue, I invite you to watch a broadcast tomorrow to discuss the transaction. It will air live at 1 p.m. Central time on our EDS Global Broadcast Network, and will be re-broadcast often over the next several days. You will receive more information on the broadcast shortly.

As we complete this agreement, I ask each of you to stay committed to your work, performing at the high levels of service we expect for our clients and from ourselves. I know I can count on you to deliver.

We are – and will remain – EDS.

Ron Rittenmeyer

More on EDS-HP:

• Can Hurd run EDS better?
• Dennis Howlett: HP’s to-do list following EDS acquisition
• Dana Gardner: HP-EDS and offloading IT to the cloud(s)
• Dennis Howlett: Does this acquisiton make sense?
• Opportunity costs loom for HP-EDS

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations. Credit: ZDNet.

Sprint Nextel said Monday that it has lost more than 1 million customers in the last year.

Sprint, which has been busy of late with a WiMax joint venture with Clearwire and alleged takeover overtures from Deutsche Telekom, provided a healthy dose of its financial reality with its first quarter results.

But the real issue is churn, which was 2.45 percent in the fourth quarter, up from 2.3 percent from a year ago. Meanwhile, average revenue per customer was $56, down from $59 a year ago.

Here’s the overview (click for full version):

“The prepaid swing to a subscriber loss is troubling in its timing and magnitude, one quarter earlier than we thought and twice as large. ARPU was also very weak,” said Soleil Securities Group analyst Gregory Lundberg in a research note.

Technically, Sprint’s financials were better than expected–for whatever that’s worth. The company reported an adjusted profit of 4 cents a share in the first quarter, compared to 18 cents a share a year ago. Wall Street was expecting a profit of 2 cents a share on an adjusted basis.

That’s just about where the good news ends.

Sprint reported a first quarter net loss of $505 million, or 18 cents a share, on revenue of $9.33 billion, down 8 percent from a year ago. The biggest reason for the decline was the exodus of wireless customers. Sprint’s total wireless subscribers fell 1.09 million in the quarter.

In a statement, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said:

“As expected, our wireless business delivered weak financial results. While the business will continue to face challenges in the short term, we are making progress in methodically attacking the sources of our performance issues. In the first quarter, we implemented a new, more focused brand campaign, we executed on our plans to take costs out of the business, and we made progress on the larger organizational and strategic decisions that we believe will lead to improved profitability in the long term. We continue to place the highest priority on reducing churn by improving the customer experience.”

The problem: Once you dig a customer service hole it takes years to get out.

As for churn, Sprint is guessing that the number of subscriber declines has peaked, but whether the company is right “will depend on how aggressive Sprint is on lowering prices,” said Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan.

Despite Sprint’s wireless problems, the company ended the quarter with 52.8 million total subscribers, which could get another wireless carrier such as Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile bigger in a hurry.

For now, Sprint is signaling more pain ahead. It expects “continued downward pressure” across all of its key financial metrics, but expects them to stabilize by the end of 2008. On the churn front, Sprint said:

“In the second quarter of 2008, we expect to report an improved post-paid customer churn rate and net post-paid subscriber losses to improve marginally from the first quarter.”

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations. Credit: ZDNet.