After backlash, Sprint CEO to return $3.25M in salary tied to iPhone

Jake Smith | May 4 2012 - 8:18 pm PT

Sprint’s CEO Daniel Hesse will take a small pay cut during 2012 after receiving a bit of flack from shareholders for investing so much in adding Apple’s iPhone to the network. Reuters reported Hesse will lose $3.25 million from his salary. Hesse said in a statement to Sprint HR: “These voluntary actions regarding my personal compensation, which total $3,250,830, will eliminate any benefit for me to the discretionary adjustment the compensation committee made earlier this year.”

Why are shareholders so upset? Sprint, the nation’s third-largest carrier, invested $15 billion to add the iPhone to its network. However, shareholders think that was a bit much, because the network has to pay a $200 higher subsidy per-device than its other phones. I guess this is a bit of an apology from Hesse.

Sales of the iPhone on the network are pretty solid, though. The company reported a sale of 1.5 million iPhones during Q1, compared to 1.8 million during Q4 2011. A very cool 44 percent (or 660,000) of the new iPhones sold during Q1 were new customers.

I think we can all agree this sounds much better than the news regarding the AT&T’s CEO from earlier today…