LAS VEGAS—Philip Christopher is back. But then again, he never went away. And now he has sub-$100 LTE phones for Sprint's new Spark network.
American Network Solutions (ANC), based in Happauge, NY, is unlike a lot of the other small cell-phone companies showing here at CTIA Super Mobility Week. According to ANS's director of project management David Ward, the difference is Christopher, a longtime wireless exec who built deep relationships with Sprint and Verizon during his years running Audiovox, UTStarcom, and PCD.
ANS is running the same playbook as Christopher's previous firms did: sourcing low-cost phones from China that satisfy U.S. carriers' odd network requirements. While ANS had an array of attractive yet generic, Mediatek-based GSM phones at its stand, its unique play involved Qualcomm-powered, CDMA-compatible phones with LTE bands 4, 12, 25, 26, and 41. In English, that means Sprint Spark.
For example, the AL5 phone, coming in the second half of 2015, built by respected manufacturer Quanta, runs Android 4.4 on a Qualcomm MSM8916 Snapdragon 410 processor at 1.4GHz. It has 4GB of storage plus a MicroSD card slot, a 720p, 5-inch screen, and a 13-megapixel main camera with a 5-megapixel front camera.
The ALP phablet also runs Android 4.4 on a Qualcomm MSM8916 Snapdragon 410 processor at 1.4GHz. It has a whopping 7-inch, 720p screen, a 5-megapixel main camera, and 16GB of storage.
The Liberty 50x smartphone is also based on the Snapdragon 410, with CDMA 1x Advanced, EVDO, and LTE Bands 25, 26, and 41. It has a 5-inch, 960-by-540 screen, 8-megapixel main camera, 1.3-megapixel front camera, and it's running Android 4.4.
These specs aren't meant to wow you. The prices are. Both of these devices are targeted at $99 or less, with no contract. If Sprint plans to move its Virgin and Boost prepaid brands to its high-capacity but underused Spark network, it needs low-cost devices like these.
"We're trying to range the Quanta stuff to carriers, and we like Sprint," Ward said.
I asked Sprint's director of product, David Owens, whether Sprint was picking up American's lineup, and he said that he wouldn't talk about future products, of course. But there's really no reason to be building Spark phones if you aren't already talking to Sprint.