(Fortune) -- It's been clear for some time that Sprint Nextel needs a major turnaround. Lots of Sprint users switch to AT&T and Verizon -- not many move in the opposite direction. And with the news this week that No. 3 wireless carrier in the U.S. is laying off 8,000 employees, the resurrection of Sprint won't be easy or painless.But some analysts are starting to rethink Sprint: A cool device exclusive to Sprint is coming soon, and the company is getting aggressive on pricing to pursue the youth market. If these moves pay off, the wireless carrier just might find itself attracting new customers -- and winning back some old ones.
A few years ago it would have been hard to imagine that Sprint would have lost so much ground to the wireless units of former monopolies. AT&T (T, Fortune 500) and Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500). Sprint Nextel (S, Fortune 500), formed by the 2005 merger of Sprint and Nextel was heralded as a "pure play" wireless deal that married Sprint's scale with Nextel's entrepreneurial zeal.
But management never brought the two corporate cultures together, and Sprint lost Nextel customers by letting network quality lapse. Right before the merger Nextel had 16 million subscribers. By the end of last year, there were 10 million. (Nextel traditionally served business users.)
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