AT&T activates at least 3.7M iPhones in Q2, more than half of 6.8M total smartphone sales

AT&T, the second largest U.S. carrier by subscribership, posted its earnings for the second quarter of 2013 on Tuesday, meeting Wall Street expectations while selling a record 6.8 million smartphones.

For the second quarter of 2013, AT&T activated at least 3.7 million iPhones. The exact number isn't known, however, because executives declined to get specific during their quarterly conference call on Tuesday, despite the fact that the carrier has offered such data in the past.

But the company did reveal that iPhone activations grew year over year. It is known that total iPhone sales reached 3.7 million in the June quarter of 2012.

The nation's No. 1 carrier, Verizon, announced last week that it activated 3.8 million iPhones. Apple's smartphone accounted for more than 50 percent of both telecoms' smartphone activations.

AT&T noted that the previous three-month period saw record Android handset sales, while smartphones as a whole accounted for 88 percent of postpaid phone sales for the quarter.

AT&T added 551,000 postpaid customers, the company's best performance in that sector since 2008, while 35 percent of those were LTE-enabled smartphones. As for the telecom's data network performance, per device usage was up 50 percent year-over-year, a number that will likely grow as AT&T builds out its LTE capabilities throughout 2013. By year's end, the network is expected to cover almost 270 million POPs, and will be largely complete by mid-2014.

18 Comments

ankleskater 1287 comments · 13 Years

About 11 years ago

So Verizon sold more iPhones than AT&T for the first time ever. This is partly due to upgrades for the first wave of Verizon iPhone customers. But will this trend continue?

nagromme 2831 comments · 22 Years

More of their smartphone sales are iPhones. Yet another nail in Apple's coffin :p

mac voyer 1199 comments · 22 Years

[quote name="ankleskater" url="/t/158666/at-t-activates-at-least-3-7m-iphones-in-q2-more-than-half-of-6-8m-total-smartphone-sales#post_2366492"]So Verizon sold more iPhones than AT&T for the first time ever. This is partly due to upgrades for the first wave of Verizon iPhone customers. But will this trend continue? [/quote] Seems you didn't read the article. We are not told how many iPhones were sold, just that it is more than this quarter last year. I suspect Google put the breaks on AT&T reporting those huge, iPhone numbers and making Android look like it was so far behind. You know, the truth.

dasanman69 12999 comments · 15 Years

[quote name="nagromme" url="/t/158666/at-t-activates-at-least-3-7m-iphones-in-q2-more-than-half-of-6-8m-total-smartphone-sales#post_2366590"]More of their smartphone sales are iPhones. Yet another nail in Apple's coffin :p[/quote] That's always been the case. At one point it was approximately 80% of smartphone sales were iPhones, that's a pretty big drop. Could be that AT&T salespeople are also pushing Android phones for that fat commission check.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mac Voyer Seems you didn't read the article. We are not told how many iPhones were sold, just that it is more than this quarter last year. I suspect Google put the breaks on AT&T reporting those huge, iPhone numbers and making Android look like it was so far behind. You know, the truth.

Only someone with a narrow bandpass filter in his optics would believe that is the reason that AT&T has declined to report this number for the first time.