It's hip to be square: Sprint courts geek cred

 

When it comes to the major U.S. wireless carriers, it's not too hard to categorize, based on their relative standings in geek esteem. T-Mobile is the most progressive and cheapest, Verizon likes mobile content yet is the least customer-friendly, AT&T is huge and has the iPhone and Sprint is, well, Sprint. Now I'm not saying that Sprint is boring--their EV-DO data network is held in high esteem and they're clearly the market leader for push-to-talk services. However, the company has historically done little to court the geek market--Candice Bergen doesn't exactly have a lot of caché with the tech crowd, especially when you consider her competition.

If you've been watching the news coming out of Sprint during the past couple of days, however, you might have sensed a slight change of tone. First there was the company's XOHM announcement: Sprint is taking a bit of a gamble on WiMAX and is taking an even bigger gamble with the controversial "XOHM" brand. Hard to pronounce though it may be, XOHM is part of a long lineage of strange brand names that seem to resonate with geeks for some reason (Xbox, anyone?). Sure, they could have easily called their WiMAX service something lame and innocuous like "AirWave," but no self-respecting geek would want to sign up for such a tame-sounding service. And make no mistake: it's the geeks who will be the early adopters.

If you check out today's news, you'll see that Sprint is also making an effort to attract the tech-savvy using the oldest geek-bait known to man: technology. While the company's "Airave" service (see today's "Geek News") has an admittedly boring name, it's actually a surprisingly progressive service. And that's not to mention the fact that dual-mode services are a clear ploy to attract customers who don't own a landline phone--folks who, statistically speaking, tend to be young and geeky.

Finally, we've got Sprint's new smartphone lineup (see today's "What's New"), which prominently features the HTC Touch (a touchscreen smartphone that's not yet available in the U.S.), and the Palm Centro (a mysterious phone that no one has even really seen yet). Anticipation is high for both devices in the tech blogosphere and Sprint knows it: snagging either of these phones (let alone both) as exclusives will do a lot to boost the company's visibility with geeks.

Sure, families and middle-aged folks may be where the money is at in the wireless industry but sales and revenue isn't all there is to it. In recent months, certain companies (you know who I'm talking about) have been able to stage massively disruptive product launches by courting the attention of geeks via blogs and industry publications. If you can harness the hype, you can increase your profile in the industry and while that might not pay off immediately, it can help a great deal in the long run. Sprint is looking at the big picture here and it's clearly no longer content to be the Murphy Brown of the wireless industry. As long as that means more cool gear and more competition for my hard-earned cash, I'm all for it. -Mehan