iPhone 5 Coming to Sprint

The Wall Street Journal reported that the fifth-generation iPhone 5 is coming to Sprint Nextel Corp this October. The Journal said the iPhone 5 will be thinner and lighter than the current model, with a better camera and a revised operating system.

Also the WSJ’s sources reveal that Sprint will begin selling the iPhone 4 at the same time with iPhone 5, with a lower amount of storage and a analogously lower price.

Sprint Nextel Corp. will begin selling the iPhone 5 in mid-October, people familiar with the matter said, closing a huge hole in the No. 3 U.S. carrier’s lineup and giving Apple Inc. another channel for selling its popular phone.

The timing, however, indicates Apple’s new iPhone will hit the market later than expected and too late to contribute to sales in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, which ends in September. Most observers had expected the device to arrive next month.

Top U.S. carrier Verizon Wireless and No. 2 AT&T Inc. will begin selling the phone in mid-October as well, two of the people said. Sprint had more than 52 million subscribers at the end of the second quarter, compared with 106 million for Verizon and nearly 99 million for AT&T.