McGuire’s Law

Ever since Sprint announced availability of the iPhone, I’ve been swamped with questions and requests for help, primarily from SERO customers. Over the past few months, I’ve probably helped answer or resolve hundreds of customer issues.

I can’t keep it up.

You may have noticed at times that it’s taken me days to respond and I’m sure I’ve totally dropped the ball on some comments or emails.

Unfortunately, for many, I’ve become the default go-to source for any question to Sprint. That’s not a good situation for anyone. You need a more responsive answer (with authority) and I need to get back to my real life.

So, I’m implementing an early New Year’s Resolution. From now on, when I get questions, if they don’t start with “I’ve contacted employee care, but…” then I’m going to respond with “Have you contacted employee care?”

As a reminder, here are the two best e-mail addresses for getting answers to your SERO and EverythingPlus questions:

• For support questions (questions from existing Sprint customers about your account, upgrading your account, etc.): everythingreferral@sprint.com
• For sales questions (customers considering becoming a Sprint customer through the EverythingPlus program): everythingplus@sprint.com

Thanks for being a customer and for your patience with me.

Blessings,

Russ

Addendum: As Will notes in the comments, the Community site at sprint.com is also a great place to get help. Claudia wrote in separately pointing specifically to the section of the site best suited for SERO questions:

“The URL for the Plans forum where all SERO/EPRP questions should be asked is http://community.sprint.com/baw/community/buzzaboutwireless/plans.”

It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted the initial piece on the four drivers of change in the industry. I didn’t intend to take this long to post the second piece, but I guess I’ve been pretty busy…

As I indicated in my first post, one of the key drivers of change has been smartphone adoption. Obviously, smartphones have been around for a long time. The Handspring and then Palm Treo’s were great early smartphone products for Sprint starting almost a decade ago. Nokia, Microsoft, and RIM also have had smartphone platforms for many years.

But, it wasn’t until Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007 that the smartphone became a mass market phenomenon.

I believe the iPhone also introduced a fundamental shift in approach to the smartphone. I’m most familiar with Palm, Microsoft, and RIM, so my apologies for not representing Nokia well. Both Palm and Microsoft focused on creating miniature computer environments. The experience had much more to do with running applications on the computer and also using the computer to make phone calls. Yes, there was an e-mail client and a browser, but these were application-centric models in the traditional PC mold. RIM always has been very messaging centric. Yes, there was a browser and yes you could run applications, but the model was very much about messaging.

The iPhone was the first smartphone that truly was Internet-centric. You may recall that for the first year, Apple didn’t even support native apps on the iPhone - they expected developers to create services/apps that were browser based. Of course, the iPhone had the first beautiful browser that ignored any concept of carrier walled gardens and gave users access to the full Internet. A year in, the App Store similarly ignored the concept of a carrier deck and created a win-win-win opportunity for developers to develop/market/sell/deliver applications and for customers to enjoy a rapidly growing array of available apps.

Of course, this invited competition and Google introduced Android at the end of 2007, with the first handset available late in 2008. And today, patents and intellectual property are the weapons of choice in this competitive battleground.

IDC estimates that US smartphone sales have increased from about 5 million in 2005 to over 100 million in 2011. Not bad growth…

Stay tuned…