Well, it looks like the aggressively priced unlimited action really didn't come a moment too soon. We're no economists here, but it doesn't take rocket science, a Ph.D., collegiate level maths, or even a fancy calculator to crunch the cold, hard numbers coming out of Sprint Nextel's fourth quarter earnings call. For starters, the number three carrier in the US reported a net loss of nearly $29.5 billion, which -- get this -- is more than the combined value of its outstanding stock. Let us reiterate for emphasis and drama value: Sprint lost more money in the fourth quarter of 2007 than the company is worth. Wow. If it's any consolation, the staggering figure is largely due to a $29.7 billion write-down of Nextel's value, which as the Wall Street Journal lays out, makes the 2005 merger officially a "Deal From Hell." With postpaid subscribers continuing to migrate to other carriers, there's no telling how to stop the hemorrhaging -- especially if the fresh $99 unlimited plan doesn't end up doing the trick -- but something tells us the move to Kansas isn't going to magically patch it all up.

Just as forecasted, Research in Motion has delivered quite the Wall Street-pleasing results in the fiscal third-quarter. The BlackBerry maker's recently released numbers showed a staggering $370.5 million profit compared to "just" $175.2 million in the same quarter last year. Furthermore, the firm's Q3 revenue rose to $1.67 billion from $835.1 million last year. According to co-CEO Jim Balsillie, it's pretty "clear [that] BlackBerry smartphones have crossed over from being viewed as a primarily enterprise product to being marketed as a strong mainstream offering," and considering the results, it's hard to argue that point. Oh, and just in case you haven't seen enough digits in one post, it should be noted that RIM shipped out more than 3.9 million handsets and added around 1.65 million BlackBerry subscribers in Q3, also. Not too shabby, eh?

Bringing the iPhone to Europe was big, but potentially bigger for Apple is the Chinese market, which probably explains why China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou is in talks with the company over its much publicized handset. Mr. Jianzhou admitted in a speech at the GSM Association's Mobile Asia Congress that he doesn't like the revenue sharing agreements that Apple has managed to wrangle: you and every other mobile executive worldwide, Wang! But who knows, maybe the fact that China Mobile has 349.66 million subscribers will be enough for Apple to make one two very big exceptions and do a more traditional deal. Whatever happens, the Chinese market is likely to throw some curveballs at Apple's usual pitch.

The Last Frontier is no stranger to computer failure on a noteworthy scale, but the latest mishap far exceeds the severity of yet another e-voting failure. A quick-fingered technician at the Alaska Department of Revenue reformatted a hard drive while handling "routine maintenance work" that contained an account worth $38 billion -- yeah, with a B. To make matters exponentially worse, he / she also deleted the backup drive for reasons unbeknownst to mere men, and we can probably assume that at least a few individuals in the department suffered a near-heart attack when they found the backup tapes completely unreadable. The only remaining proof of the oil-funded account was in 300 boxes of paperwork, which had to be digitized yet again by staff members working incredibly long hours completing work that had just been done a few months earlier. Incredibly, no one was reportedly punished for the incident, and while the recovery efforts were actually finished in just six painstaking weeks, the damage inflicted by a few careless keystrokes totaled $220,700 in excess labor costs. Ouch.

[Via Fark]