Microsoft had its largest Windows Phone launch yet this past holiday season, but there was one key player absent. Sprint did not join AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon in releasing a Windows Phone 8 handset onto their airwaves. The third-ranked operator is getting close a two-year long Windows Phone drought, since the HTC Arrive's release in March 2011, for its 56 million mobile subscribers.

Fortunately, it appears Sprint is ready to turn things around and finally jump on the bandwagon. One of our readers has tipped us off to the existence of a Sprint support page, which simply reads "Windows Phone 8 is coming soon!" You can't get much more direct than that. Sprint has informally committed to a 2013 release of Windows Phone 8 handsets before, but the appearance of this page just before CES 2013 kicks off could be taken as a hint of some product reveals this week.

As for what device Sprint could have up its sleeves, we can point towards two reports. The first, from February 2012, claimed that the carrier would be offering a Nokia Lumia device with support for Sprint's LTE network. The second, from April 2012, pegged Nokia creating a QWERTY-sliding handset with a WVGA display. Both have Nokia in common, but odds for a CES 2013 announcement don't look likely as Sprint does not have a formal event planned for the show.

[Thanks, Noah!]

Source: Sprint