Hedgehogging: hedge*hog*ging v. Interrupting conversations in an office environment by poking your head over the top of the cube

So, Sprint Nextel posted a $29.5 billion loss for the fourth quarter of 2007. That would be a billion with a “b.” (And you were shocked when you received your post-holiday credit card statements.) Now Sprint Nextel did note that all of that loss and then a little more were the result of write-downs on the value of some of its operations, which basically came down to the company de-valuing the Nextel portion of its business from the $35 billion it cost to acquire in 2005 to about the cost of a large popcorn at the local theater. This from the same company that in late 2005 raised its forecast in merger synergies from $12.1 billion to $14.5 billion and said that those synergies would produce earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization margins of 40% or more by this year. But those were predictions from back in 2005, and really, what did we know back then?
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Motorola’s new CFO, Paul Liska, is going to get paid around $1 million a year, according to Crain’s Chicago Business. We’re assuming he’s going to get paid so much because he’s going to find all that money that Moto has lost over the past year or so. Mr. Liska must be really, really good at finding things that are lost.
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We received an awesome report from NPD Group last week showing that the demographic of iPhone buyers has changed from the the “younger, male and minority consumers,” who bought the device when it was first launched toward the more boring “middle-aged and white” consumers who are now buying the device. The firm also noted that the iPhone is becoming more attractive to female consumers. Not really sure what all of this means or how it relates to anything in particular, but we just thought it was something you might like to know.
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This week’s attempt for our regular “Retail Snapshot” feature fell a bit short after our initial plans to talk with a store representative for now defunct MVNO Voce fell through. We hope it wasn’t something we did.