The Wall Street Journal Reports,"the chief executive of SoftBank Masayoshi Son said he isn't satisfied with Sprint's current position as the No. 3 mobile carrier in the U.S.—far behind leaders AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc.—yet added that it would be "a dream within a dream" to challenge those leaders alone''.
"With scale merit, we don't have to settle with No. 3. We can compete fiercely" to bring about faster and less-costly mobile networks, Mr. Son said Wednesday after announcing Tokyo-based SoftBank's fiscal third-quarter financial results.
"I can't settle for No. 3 or No. 2. It's my personality," he said.
Whether Mr. Son will decide to proceed with a bid for T-Mobile depends on how badly he believes Sprint needs T-Mobile's scale and whether he can persuade Deutsche Telekom AG, which owns 67% of T-Mobile, to agree to such a move without a high breakup fee.
Mr. Son, who blames a lack of competition for what he says are overpriced and slow U.S. networks, is likely to explore all possibilities, say people close to the Internet and telecommunications magnate. Yet if he decides not to pursue a deal, there is plenty still to do at Sprint. The SoftBank subsidiary intends to spend an additional $8 billion in 2014, on top of $7.5 billion last year, in an effort to speed up its network connection speeds by 13 times.
Mr. Son also said he would further shore up Sprint management, but didn't elaborate.
SoftBank has been tapping profits from its mobile-phone unit in Japan in an attempt to turn around Sprint and secure financing for new acquisitions.
SoftBank, which has collected more than 1,300 Internet and mobile companies since it began as a software distributor three decades ago, also holds a 36.7% stake in China's top online retailer, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
Bankers say Alibaba is preparing to list its shares in what is likely to be one of the largest initial public offerings by an Internet company.
SoftBank, which acquired Vodafone Group PLC's Japan operations in 2006, upended a market dominated by NTT DoCoMo Inc. and Japanese handset makers by introducingApple Inc.'s iPhone and slashing price plans.
The company hopes to do the same with Sprint, which continued to lose subscribers during the last three months of 2013, although the bleeding slowed. Sprint is now building out a high-speed wireless network in the U.S. to battle AT&T and Verizon, as well as T-Mobile, which has been rolling out aggressive payment plans.
Shares in SoftBank have slid 15% since the start of the calendar year amid concerns about the future of a Sprint deal with T-Mobile. The shares more than doubled last year.
For the October-December quarter, SoftBank's net profit fell 13% from a year earlier to ¥97.25 billion ($947.5 million), as the company contended with costs after the Sprint acquisition. Still, analysts said the overall result exceeded their predictions, citing a stellar performance in SoftBank's home market and a smaller-than-expected loss posted by Sprint.
SoftBank doesn't provide a full-year forecast, but analysts said the company is well on track to achieving Mr. Son's previously stated target for the company's operating profit to surpass ¥1 trillion for the year ending in March.
For the last three months of 2013, Sprint booked a loss of $1.04 billion, compared with a loss of $1.32 billion a year earlier. The company also lost 69,000 net postpaid subscribers during its fourth quarter, though that was substantially smaller than the loss of 535,000 in its third quarter and a loss of 243,000 a year earlier.
