It's safe to say that Sprint Nextel (S: sentiment, chart, options) shares have underperformed the market this year the equity is down nearly 35% year-to-date. However, the stock is bucking today's downtrend in fine fashion, up 3.6% at last check.

Bill Ogle, chief marketing officer for Samsung Mobile, said in a joint release with Sprint that "The overwhelming success of the Samsung Instinct reinforces our expectations; people want choices when looking to buy a powerful touch screen phone and the Samsung Instinct is a top contender." John Garcia, president of Sprint's wireless division, added that "...Sprint's EVDO Rev A network offers five times more mobile broadband coverage than the AT&T 3G network based on square miles."

It's hard not to interpret the above comments as direct attacks on Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, which is probably exactly how they were intended. The iPhone is obviously the touch-screen handset that all the cool kids are using; of course, those cool kids have lodged their fair share of complaints about dropped calls and miscellaneous iPhone glitchery (thanks to my friend John for the market research). Can Sprint emerge as the dark-horse competitor to topple Apple from its smart-phone pedestal? Well, in today's trading, AAPL is down more than 4% while Sprint is enjoying a nearly equivalent gain. Game on!