Sprint Nextel Corp. is challenging the iPhone head-on in a series of online commercials for the Instinct, the company’s much-hyped touch-screen phone that comes out next month.
Sprint, the nation’s third-largest wireless carrier, has produced five short video spots that tout what the company says are key advantages of Samsung’s Instinct over Apple Corp.’s popular iPhone, which is offered by rival AT&T Inc.
Beginning with the headline, “Instinct vs. iPhone,” one spot highlighting the Instinct’s Global Positioning System feature — not found in the iPhone — shows the two handsets side by side as they pinpoint a user’s location. The iPhone screen shows a map with a circle around several streets while the Instinct marks a location with an arrow.
“Somewhere in this ’ginormous’ circle,” an announcer says of the iPhone’s rendering. “Ah, that’s more like it; 19th and York,” he says of the Instinct. The video concludes: “Instinct wins.”
“The iPhone does do so many things well and has set a bar for other phones to reach for,” Sprint spokesman Rich Pesce said. “But when it comes to GPS functionality specifically, I think the Instinct will offer a level of detail and accuracy that other phones will strive to reach.”
The remaining videos show off other Instinct features that Sprint says make it better than the iPhone: faster Internet, shooting video, live TV service and downloading music.
The videos are “an excellent way to maintain excitement for the Instinct,” Mr. Pesce said. They will start appearing Thursday on video-sharing sites and major portals such as Yahoo.com, AOL.com and MSN.com, as well as a Sprint site called Nowisgood.com.
Sprint Chief Executive Officer Dan Hesse avoided direct mention of Apple’s iconic handset when he unveiled the Instinct last month at the CTIA Wireless trade show in Las Vegas. He demonstrated the new device, which resembles the iPhone with a sleek, black look and a large touch screen.
“When Dan Hesse held up the new phone at CTIA, he didn’t take on iPhone directly, but we all knew,” telecommunications analyst Jeff Kagan said. “The larger-than-usual budget for marketing and advertising for this new Instinct phone shows Sprint is taking this device very seriously. Sprint will be all about Instinct for the rest of the year.”
Sprint has yet to announce a price for the Instinct but last month said it would cost at least $100 less than the $399 iPhone. The Overland Park, Kan., company plans to spend five times as much to market the Instinct as it does other handsets — $150 million compared with the normal $30 million — executives said last month.
Indeed, the stakes are high: Sprint is the only carrier among the top three that is losing contract subscribers. Earlier this year, the company posted a fourth-quarter loss of $29.5 billion after a $29.7 billion write-down of its ill-fated merger with Nextel.
Mr. Hesse, a longtime AT&T veteran, was hired in December to turn things around. Since that time, the company has unveiled a new marketing strategy with new TV commercials — one features Mr. Hesse and another is a spoof of fire and rescue officials using Sprint’s push-to-talk phones to conduct government business — as well as a new tag line, the “Now Network.”
Sprint also undercut flat-rate, unlimited calling plans from competitors AT&T and Verizon with its “Simply Everything” plan, which includes unlimited texting, data, TV and e-mail in addition to voice services for $99.99 a month.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.