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Sprint Nextel is out of favor, Way out. Wall St thinks its third place spot behind Cingular and Verizon Wireless ain’t a good place to be. And intergating the Nextel purchase has cost a couple of senior exect at Sprint their jobs. New subscriber growth has been hard to come by.

Sprint plans to walk a different path than other cell companies in the US when it launches it WiMax network in 2008. The technology platform, supported by Intel, Samsung, and Motorola, will by-pass normal cellular structure for delivering broadband to phones.

After trading over $25 for most of the second half of 2005 and early part of 2006, the stock has dropped to a little of $19 as investors continue their concerns about weak results.

Spint does have some critical things in it favor. There are really only three large cellular providers in the US and they are one of these. As Morningtar points out, the Nextel subscriber base is made up of very profitable business customers.

Spint’s new WiMax network may power PCs as well as phones, and this could be an important new source of income for the company. Sprint has announced a mobile search initiative with Microsoft and a wireless partnership with Dell.

Sprint could use a few more fans, but with partners like Intel, Motorol, Dell, and Microsoft, those fans may not be far behind.

Can you say WiMax?

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.