Sprint offers free Amazon Prime membership to customers who buy a new Samsung phone

Sprint (NYSE: S) is hoping to gain market share as the holiday shopping season approaches via a new promotion that gives new and existing customers Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) Prime memberships if they purchase certain Samsung Electronics smartphones.

Sprint said that from today through Nov. 30, new and existing Sprint customers who activate qualifying Samsung devices on Sprint will receive a full year of Amazon Prime, a $99 value. With Prime memberships customers can enjoy unlimited free two-day shipping on more than 20 million items, unlimited streaming of tens of thousands of movies and TV episodes with Prime Video and access to ad-free streaming of over a million songs, among other benefits.

The offer is available for existing Sprint customers who upgrade or add a new line of service and new customers switching to Sprint. Qualified Samsung smartphones include the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note 5. Customers need to purchase one of the phones through Sprint Lease, Sprint Easy Pay, sign a two-year contract or pay full retail price.

In addition, new and existing Sprint customers that trade in a qualified smartphone can lease a 32 GB Galaxy S6 for only $10 per month or the 32GB Galaxy Note 5 for $17 per month. Sprint said that offer is only available in Sprint retail stores and Sprint at RadioShack. That offer is available through Nov. 25.

Sprint is clearly hoping to build on the momentum it has achieved the last few months in adding postpaid phone customers. Earlier this week the carrier reported that it gained postpaid handset customers on the Sprint network in the third quarter, the first time it had done so in a full quarter in more than two years. However, that market excludes Nextel/iDEN subscriber losses. (Sprint finally shut down the iDEN network in June 2013 but had significant iDEN subscriber losses before then).

After suffering subscriber losses, especially postpaid losses, for so long, Sprint has some cause for optimism. The company said that based on October results, it has now seen positive postpaid phone net additions for six consecutive months, a streak not seen in nearly three years.                        

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