Sprint was relatively late in the game for both the iPhone and LTE, but it says it's not worried about either. In an interview, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse told Mobile World Live that the company's high iPhone subsidies pay off in the long term. For one thing, the phone brought in new customers: four out of every ten iPhones is apparently sold to a new subscriber, a number he says is twice as high as for AT&T and Verizon. What's more, iPhone users have less turnover than users of other smartphones, and they use less data on average than a "high-end 4G Android device." Even with the initial subsidy, Hesse said, "the iPhone customer is actually more profitable than the average smartphone customer."
Sprint also expects its LTE service, which is planned for a mid-2012 launch, to catch up to its competitors "pretty quickly." By 2013, Hesse says the company will have a "large LTE footprint," using its unlimited cellphone data plan to attract customers. And that plan, he says, isn't going to change any time soon. "My plan is to continue [unlimited data] for as long as we can, hopefully forever." That doesn't apply to tablets or hotspots, but it's still unusual for a large American carrier. You can find the full video at the source link below.