If you recall I've been all over both Sprint and RIMM on their execution.

RIMM got roasted this morning.  They're still chattering about "hiring a marketing chief" when what they should do is exploit one of their core differences -- opening the Playbook and thus BB10 right now to GAPPS -- thereby enabling the immediate running of all Android apps!

They haven't despite this being an obvious step they could take that would bring instant market differentiation to their BB10 and Playbook devices over all the others in the marketplace and I bet they won't exploit that difference.  If they don't IMHO their stock is headed for the toilet, down 5% today thus far (and possibly another 5% tomorrow and on until zero) if they don't cut the crap and start executing on the things they can do that make them unique instead of trying to be "another X", where "X" is Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.

Sprint, on the other hand, got this as a recommendation from me in July of last year:

There are things Sprint could do that might be extraordinarily disruptive to other carriers.  Presuming they have the capacity to deal with it, they could allow the activation of any of their post-paid devices on Virgin, provided you pay full price for them (or acquire them used on the secondary market.)  This would be an absolute destroyer of the postpaid model among the "Big Three To Be Two" (Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile); the question is whether it can be done profitably. It has to be - they can't make losses per-customer with this sort of change, but if they can do it and make money, oh boy.

The differences here in cost-of-service between Virgin at their $55/all-in-unlimited plan and AT&T's or Verizon's is not small.  The biggest problem is that they may cannibalize their own postpaid subscriber base, and there are a lot of people who think prepaid is a "crap business."

I'm not in that camp - my view is that any business that makes profits is a good one and one that makes losses is a bad line of business irrespective of all other considerations.  Therefore, the only question I have is whether such a change would make profits or losses.  The potential to literally steal millions of post-paid customers from the other carriers is not to be ignored, although one must balance that against the risk of self-cannibalization or worse, making a move that the other carriers might be able to emulate.  Only Sprint knows their internal cost structure and whether this can be done at a profit - but if it can be, it's a "disruptive" move that could rocket the company - and the stock.

And what did Sprint recently announce?

They're going to start selling their WiMax phones -- 4g phones -- re-branded to run on Virgin and Boost.

That's pretty-much what I recommended they do -- break the glass and make high-end devices available on their prepaid service. 

They just did it.

It did take their stock going from the $4s to the $2.50 area to wake them up but wake up they did and their CEO just bought 50,000 shares a few days ago - with cash.

There are a lot of reasons that executives sell stock but only one reason they buy -- they think it's undervalued and is going to go a lot higher.  Since insiders can't trade actively in their own stock it means they believe it's a long term buy too.

Now to be fair these are very different businesses, but the point remains -- both were thought of as leaders and both got themselves in quite a bit of trouble.

But Sprint's CEO has pulled his head out of his ass and found one of the places that, for little if not no money the company can capitalize on something their competitors refuse to do in an effort to steal market share, and in doing so drive revenues and profits higher.  They are gaining prepaid customers and with this move they'll gain many, many more.

RIMM's CEO, on the other hand, has yet to see daylight with his eyes as he's buried up to his neck in his own back door.

Disclosure: Yes, I have and do trade both names.