Sprint CEO Says Android Not Good Enough for Sprint Branding

It appears that Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO, is not sold on the whole Android epidemic. Hesse told the National Press Club in Washington that Android is “not good enough to put the Sprint brand on it.”

Although Hesse has promised to sell an Android based phone sometime in the future, he clearly believes that it is not ready for prime time. Sprint is part of an alliance of about 30 companies that all said they would support Google’s development of a mobile phone operating system. Sprint believes that its support comes through communicating the fact that it is just not ready yet. T-Mobile (USA) on the other hand has started selling the first Android based device earlier this week – the HTC G1.

According to consumer feedback in forums across the internet, the feelings seem to be mixed. Some people are leaning more towards the fact that they think Sprint should have on-boarded the G1, while an equal amount of others seem to think that the Android is clearly not ready for public usage.

Forums on many open-source community sites are showing some signs of outrage, claiming things such as :

“Android is open-source, and open-source is supported by the community. Regardless of bugs and security flaws that may arise, it will not get as much attention if it is held back – open-source relies on the community !”

A pretty strong statement in its own respect, but one has to remember that someone selling this phone needs to market it as well – and unless they market it directly to the said ‘community’ then sales would not be adequate.

Some people even suggest that Hesse may have made this decision based on the fact that a recently discovered security flaw was identified in the Android’s browser system – however this is just speculation and there is no concrete evidence to support the claims.

Nonetheless, we believe Android is a good thing and will definitely get its share of attention – only time will tell the ultimate outcome.