Kevin Packingham, who has been working for Sprint since 1999, is leaving the company on August 16th. His name probably isn’t familiar to you, but he’s the dude who was responsible for the HTC EVO 4G account.
Seeing how it was the first “4G” phone [check out my article “4G in America: Lies, Lies, and More Damn Lies“] in America, I’d say Kevin did a rather good job. Sure, there were some supply and demand problems in the beginning, and you couldn’t really use video calling unless you had a special application installed, and there were several initial units that had terrible build quality issues, but baring all that, it’s the “super phone” that started the race towards giant screen devices. My best friend in New York City has one, got it on launch day, and he’s happier than a pig in shit. This is without WiMAX too.
Kevin was also responsible for the Epic 4G from Samsung, the only Galaxy S variant to include a QWERTY keyboard and WiMAX. That’s yet to go on sale, but when it does I expect nothing less than huge queues and plenty of of “sold out” signs hanging in Sprint’s retail stores.
Kevin says he’s going to work at an unnamed company in the Kanas City area, but declined to mention any specific details. I’ve got to wonder if his departure was due to him simply being bored with the company, or the fact that Clearwire, which builds Sprint’s WiMAX network, is currently testing LTE technology that it may or may not deploy next year.
The problem with devices such as the EVO 4G or Epic is that they’re highly custom. Sprint is one of the smaller American operators, so when they place orders in the hundreds of thousands, as opposed to millions, then they’re paying a premium. Sprint’s financials have been taking a battering over the past few years, but recently they’re starting to perk up.
People love speed and large screens, who would have thought otherwise?