What did Softbank get when they bought Sprint? Grumpy customers!

Sprint has finally been taken off the market by Softbank. In addition to a reasonable spectrum footprint in the United States, good relationships with M2M players like Amazon (Kindles get books delivered through Sprint), regional advantages in the midwest, and the largest population of grumpy customers in the United States. Grumpy? Since when could we measure grumpiness? In our weekly reporting of shifts in Smartphone consumer demand, we analyze the different consumer handset engagements by major carrier. Since we started doing the analysis, we noticed that Sprint customers, for the same handsets, were more disappointed than their peers from other carriers.

Comparison of Handset OEM brand perceptions between Sprint and Verizon. With the exception of Samsung, all brands at Sprint are disappointing consumers.

The chart above shows a month to month comparison in the overall OEM perception trends for Sprint and Verizon. Of all the carriers we track, Sprint has the lowest Delight levels. Verizon customers are, on average, twice as delighted as Sprint customers. Thank goodness Sprint is carrying Samsung handsets, which are responsible for the only population of happy customers at Sprint.

For Softbank, the opportunity is to understand what about the Sprint experience is driving such melancholy and reinforce the strong ties with Samsung. Apple is a distant second to Samsung at Sprint, signaling continued erosion of Apple’s mindshare in the United States.

If you are interesting in unpacking specific differences between Sprint and other carriers or what about Samsung’s handsets seem to be delighting Sprint consumers, let us know. We are now publishing our weekly Peek™ report for Smartphones that provides where the shifts in consumer demand are going. Subscribe here.