AppleInsider Staff
Apple retained a majority of all smartphone sales at AT&T last quarter despite the fact that the carrier is no longer the exclusive provider of the iPhone in the U.S. This year, Apple added Verizon and Sprint as official carrier partners, and is even expanding the iPhone to smaller regional carriers like C Spire.
The iPhone accounted for 56 percent of smartphone activations at AT&T even as the presence of devices running Google Android continues to grow on the nation's second-largest wireless carrier. AT&T, in a press release accompanying its quarterly results, boasted that sales of Android devices and more than doubled year over year, making them, along with "other non-iPhone smartphones" nearly of all smartphone sales at the carrier.
AT&T also announced it activated more than a million iPhone 4S units as of Tuesday, which makes it the most successful iPhone launch in the company's history. The company's press release said AT&T is the only U.S. carrier to offer the iPhone 4S "with 4G speeds."
"It's no surprise that customers are clamoring for the iPhone 4S and they want it to run on a network that lets them download twice as fast as competitors'," said Ralph de la Vega, President and CEO, AT&T Mobility & Consumer Markets.
As for last quarter, AT&T had a 2.1 million increase in total wireless subscribers, putting it over the 100 million customer milestone. Its strong iPhone performance came despite the fact that Apple did not release an updated handset in the September quarter, as the iPhone 4S was only announced and released this month.
Apple also reported its earnings this week, and said the fact that it did not launch a new iPhone in the previous quarter led to significantly reduced sales as rumors of the iPhone 4S grew. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said there was a very clear drop in iPhone sales at the end of the quarter as speculation over the iPhone 4S continued to mount.
In the previous quarter, AT&T activated 3.6 million iPhones, while Verizon activated 2.3 million of just the iPhone 4. AT&T remains the exclusive U.S. carrier of Apple's GSM-only iPhone 3GS, which is now available for free with a two-year service contract.
Verizon is set to report its earnings on Friday, in which it is expected to detail its own iPhone activation numbers. Sprint only began selling the iPhone this month, so any activations would be represented in its next quarterly earnings report.
Christine McKee
Mike Wuerthele
Malcolm Owen
Andrew O'Hara
Mike Wuerthele and Malcolm Owen
26 Comments
Not Surprised....Why would you want any other.....getting 7MBPS in Houston
Still waiting for that mass exodus from AT&T?.
Still waiting for that mass exodus from AT&T?.
I would say that data caps on VZW plus the inability to talk and surf pretty much killed that. There are some defectors but not in any amount that'll hurt ATT.
If the LTE iPhone comes out in June AT&T won't have much of an LTE network by then, so I would expect a mass exodus to Verizon who already covers almost the entire nation.
Still waiting for that mass exodus from AT&T?.
I actually walked away as the 4s came out and headed to sprint. My ATT call coverage was garbage. Sprint's data was dead-slow and calls seemed to drop MORE often than ATT -- the first call out of the box failed within a minute. So I sheepishly had to walk back to ATT (after refusing a $30 dollar credit per month for the next six months when I called to cancel), and now WAIT for a new 4S since they're long gone.
I hardly make calls, but I can't deal with slow data. The 4S speeds for ATT zip past Sprint so hard.
Lesson learned.