Sprint Overestimated EVO Sales

Sprint-Nextel (S) announced last Friday that sales of its HTC EVO 4G phone, a competitor to Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 4, "marked the largest quantity of a single phone sold in one day ever for Sprint -- the record was previously held by both Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre. In addition, the total number of HTC EVO 4G devices sold on launch day was three times the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre devices sold over their first three days on the market combined." It turns out that those numbers were wrong -- very wrong.

Late yesterday, Sprint corrected itself. "We originally reported that the total number of HTC EVO 4G devices sold on launch day was three times the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre devices sold over their first three days on the market combined. We inadvertently erred in the comparison. The total number of HTC EVO 4G devices sold on launch day was in line with the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre devices sold over their first three days on the market combined."

Still, Sprint says: "Launch day sales of HTC EVO 4G were six times greater than launch day sales of Samsung Instinct and nearly twice the launch day sales for Palm Pre."

The first announcement was enough to push Sprint's stock up 4% early on Friday. Some investors may think -- probably rightly so -- that they were burned by the first announcement. The news also puts a spotlight on the demand for Sprint's new 4G WiMax service: Will people be enthralled with super-fast wireless Internet?

Sprint needs major success with the EVO and its 4G service. It has 47 million subscribers, which puts it well behind Verizon Wireless, at almost 93 million, and AT&T Wireless, at 87 million. Sprint also needs the new products to do well to offset customer service complaints and a falling customer base.