Well, it’s finally happened. RadioShack is filing for bankruptcy, and has announced a deal with Tier One carrier Sprint, who will acquire and operate 1,750 of RadioShack’s stores. Reports indicate this is going to more than double Sprint’s current retail presence, which amounts to about 1,100 stores currently.
From what I can gather, Sprint will jointly operate the RadioShack stores as a store-within-a-store, and Sprint should occupy about one-third of the retail space and add quite a bit of advertising. In addition to their normal postpaid offerings, Sprint expects to sell Sprint Prepaid, Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile phones and plans in some of these stores.
Personally, I think this is probably a smart move on the part of Sprint, as they have the fewest stores of all of the four tier one carriers, and rely heavily on third party stores like Walmart for their prepaid brands Boost and Virgin. In the past, Sprint has had some trouble with associates in these third-party stores not understanding and marketing Sprint’s products properly. Fairly recently, Virgin Mobile was forced to shutter their Custom plans, as few customers understood it, and the plans were not gaining the expected traction.
There aren’t too many details out right now about the Sprint/RadioShack deal, but roughly half of all of RadioShack’s stores have been acquired by Sprint. This is good news, as it will easily help make Sprint’s prepaid brands far more visible and accessible. If you have a RadioShack near you, keep an eye on it, and be sure to let us know if you start seeing Sprint signs everywhere!]]>
