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Verizon activates 2.2 million iPhones in seven weeks

Verizon Wireless just released their first quarter earnings, their first quarter with official iPhone sales. The carrier activated 2.2 million CDMA iPhone units in the seven weeks between the February 10 launch and  March 31, 2011. They reported a 6.3 percent annual increase in service revenues based on 1.8 million net additions which includes 906,000 retail postpaid net customer additions. The carrier had 104.0 million total connections, including 88.4 million retail customers.

Data revenues were up 22.3 percent and operating income margin was 25.8 percent. Verizon also activated 260,000 HTC Thunderbolt units over the two-week period. Verizon’s iPhone figures compare to 3.6 million iPhones AT&T activated during the entire quarter. Crunching the numbers from Apple, AT&T and Verizon yields interesting conclusions. Read on…

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Timothy Cook told analysts on a conference call yesterday that US iPhone sales grew 150 percent annually, meaning some 6.75 million units were sold in the US in the entire first quarter. So, Verizon’s 2.2 million iPhones plus the 3.6 million units activated on the AT&T network leaves about a million iPhones (or 950,000 units) in the US channel inventory.

These are the units either waiting to be activated or stocked. This estimate doesn’t take into account iPhone sales at third-party retailers like Walmart, Best Buy, Target and others which, of course, are also activated on either AT&T or Verizon network.

Also worth a note is the fact that Verizon was selling iPhones at a faster rate than its rival AT&T, about 53,000 units per day versus about 40,000 units for AT&T. Another thing which surprised me is that the combined AT&T and Verizon acitvations represent less than a third of the 18.65 million iPhones shipped worldwide during the quarter.

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