Andre Yoskowitz
14 Jun 2010 22:42
On June 4th, Sprint launched the HTC EVO 4G to rave reviews. A few days later, the carrier announced that the HTC device had broken the carrier's launch day sales record, even selling "three times" as many units as the Palm Pre and Samsung Instinct did combined on their respective first days.
Additionally, calls to over 20 retailers showed that the phone was sold out, practically everywhere.
Within days, however, the U.S. third biggest carrier apologized for overstating the figures.
MobileCrunch is reporting today that there was an under-the-radar part of the story, in which a Sprint employee was fired for posting unofficial sales numbers online, using the company's inventory system.
The original post was made on XDA-Developers, but was taken down since. Part of the post is still cached, courtesy of Google, and it says: "according to sprint we as a [company] have sold 66,483 theres a whole bunch of stores though that dont have any more inventory i dont think any major city sprint does." The post was made June 6th, one day before Sprint posted any numbers.
The 66,483 units sold was from Sprint stores only, and did not include those sold through WalMart, RadioShack and other retailers.
After the post, an internal Sprint team member traced the post back to an employee in Florida, and the poor fellow was fired within 24 hours.