AT&T has posted one killer quarter thanks to the Apple iPhone. We already knew that Apple had strong numbers after getting news from its earnings call that it sold 14.1 million iPhones over the summer. Now AT&T is announcing that it activated 5.4 million iPhone smartphones during that time.
These numbers are a record in iPhone sales for AT&T. The carrier says that it “is 62 percent more than the previous quarterly record of 3.2 million activated in the second quarter of 2010.” Moreover, nearly a quarter of those activations were new customers. I guess those antenna issues really weren’t much of a problem for most customers at all. It certainly wasn’t a deterrent for those who really wanted the iPhone.
And almost predictably, data usage and sales were up, too. Messaging and data revenue were up $1.1 billion, a 30.5% increase from the year before, bringing its total revenues from data services to $4.8 billion.
For additional details about AT&T’s earnings for the third quarter, see the press release on the next page.