Mobile Operators USA: Sprint buys Virgin and Touch Pro2 comes to T-Mobile

Two mobile operator stories from the US leap out today. First, Sprint Nextel has announced it will be buying the rest of Virgin Mobile USA (it already owns 13%), and T-Mobile will soon be carrying the much-anticipated HTC Touch Pro2.

Sprint Nextel acquires Virgin Mobile USA:

The bare bones for this transaction are as follows:
- Sprint has announced it will buy Virgin Mobile USA completely, for $483 million
- The payment will be a mixture of cash and shares, and will also include over $200 million to close out any outstanding debts of Virgin
- Public stockholders in Virgin will get around $5.50 per share
- The other major shareholders, Richard Bransons Virgin Group and SK Telecom, will be getting roughly $5 a share each. Virgin holds 26 million shares and SK holds 14 million.

From the release:

Dan Hesse, Sprint Nextel president: “The acquisition of Virgin Mobile USA positions Sprint for even greater success in the prepaid wireless segment. Prepaid is growing at an unprecedented rate with consumers keenly focused on value. Virgin Mobile is an iconic brand in the marketplace that will complement our Boost Mobile brand.”

Dan Schulman, current Virgin Mobile USA CEO: “Virgin Mobile USA redefined the U.S. prepaid segment when we launched seven years ago. Sprint is committed to growing its prepaid business and this transaction will provide us with the resources and opportunities to compete more aggressively, and strengthen our position in prepaid.”

What we think?

Why Sprint is buying out a smaller player in the pre-paid market is anyone’s guess. Maybe they just have that much capital lying around spare. Or maybe Virgin is more of a threat to Sprints extremely similar Boost brand than we had realised. Either way, this does strengthen Sprints position in the pre-paid market. And as Rob Pegoraro points out, the Virgin USA network is better capable of handling mobile data. It would be nice to see some Boost-style deal with better deals for mobile web users.

Also, following the recent sale of it’s entire Candaian operations to Bell Canada, I guess Virgin is just giving up on Northern America entirely.

HTC Touch Pro2 comes to T-Mobile:

We first reported on the Touch Pro2 back in April, and we’ve been looking forward to it ever since. It’s a nice little smartphone, and T-Mobile has announced it will be available from August 12th.

The basics:

It’s got a 3.6 inch touchscreen, with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard tucked behind. It handles 3G network and Wi-Fi connections. It has GPS for geo-location and location-based services, and fairly tidy little 3.2MP camera. For further details, check our original article.

The price:

At the time it was announced, I was skeptical of the cost. The Pro2 was announced at 675 euro, just for the phone!  T-Mobile hasn’t released any pricing details whatsoever, so I’m doubtful that tag is going to come down much. If it was going to be a bargain, you can bet T-Mobile would be bragging about it in the release.