Sprint Corp. and Nextel Communications Inc. may soon be expected to join their efforts in the mobile phone industry merging to create a company with 33 million customers and joined market value of about $35 billion.

Right now the two firms are in early-stage talks concerning the merger that could help Sprint get closer to the No.2 in the market Verizon Wireless with 42 million customers.

Ultimately, you have to have scale to compete with Cingular and Verizon,’’ said John Krause, an Appleton, Wisconsin- based analyst at Thrivent Financial for Lutherans.

The deal could help both companies to slash costs by merging overlapping operations.