AT&T Activates Record 3.2 Million iPhones in Q3
by John Paczkowski
Posted on October 22, 2009 at 5:05 AM PT
How badly does AT&T want to renew its iPhone exclusivity contract with Apple?
Pretty damn badly.
Posting third-quarter earnings that topped Wall Street expectations this morning, AT&T (T) said it activated a record 3.2 million iPhones during the period (not surprising given Apple’s blowout quarter).
Of those, 40 percent were for customers new to the carrier. That’s quite a bit more than Wall Street expected, and this surge did much to balance continued weakness in AT&T’s wireline business (click on slide below to enlarge). In fact, if that 40 percent metric is accurate, then Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone single-handedly generated an astonishing 92 percent of AT&T’s post-paid subscriber growth.
“We delivered a terrific wireless quarter, IP data growth was strong and execution across the business continues to be solid,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said in an earnings release, and indeed, that would seem to be the case.
Wireless data-services revenue spiked 34 percent. And revenue from the wireless segment overall increased 8.2 percent as profit grew 41 percent. Wireless turnover rate fell to a record low of 1.4 percent.
Meanwhile, wireline revenue fell 7.1 percent, profit 30 percent.
So in the end, AT&T posted earnings of $3.2 billion, or 54 cents a share, down from $3.23 billion, or 55 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue slipped 1.6 percent to $30.86 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected per-share earnings of 50 cents on revenue of $30.88 billion.
At $26.86, shares of AT&T are up about 3.5 percent in early morning trading.
Comments
Wait a minute, wasn’t that apologist – er – CEO at AT&T just saying the other day that the iPhone has little impact on their network? That network congestion and dropped calls at a rate of as much as 30 percent is not caused by the iPhone?
Oh, I get it. He was placating Apple for his own company’s inadequacies because the iPhone is doing so much for their bottom line they can’t say anything for fear of losing the proverbial golden goose.
Posted by Eric Welch at October 22nd, 2009 at 8:00 am