AT&T numbers released, completes the puzzle

Seth Weintraub

October 22, 2008

iPhone - iPod

AT&T released their quarterly numbers today. Taken with yesterday's iPhone numbers, we have a more complete view of the iPhone global sales outlook.

Of the 6.9 million 3G iPhones sold in the quarter, AT&T sold 2.4 million of them. That means that 4.5 million iPhones were sold overseas, almost 2/3rds of the total 3G iPhone allotment.

AT&T had 2.0 million new subscrbers in the quarter. Of the 2.4 million iPhone's sold, 40% were to new subscribers. That mean .96 million iPhone 3G customers were new to AT&T. So 1/2 of AT&T's new subscribers were iPhone 3G customers. Not a bad partnership to be in if you ask us.

Oh, and just to put the cherry on top: 50.5 percent growth in wireless data revenues from Internet access, messaging, e-mail and related services; total wireless revenues up 15.4 percent

We wonder what Verizon thinks about their decision to pass on the iPhone?

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Comments (13)

AT (not verified) | October 22, 2008 - 8:22am

I just read on crunchgear that even though so many new iphone owners were new customers, they still lost $900 million on it. How good of a partnership is it really?

http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/10/22/iphone-iphone-iphone-iphone-iphone/

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 22, 2008 - 1:48pm

No, that is a misinterpretation. The one-time charge was related to the AT&T "iPhone 3G Initiative", which was AT&T's cross-country upgrade to their 3G infrastructure.

They charged the 3G upgrade to the "iPhone 3G Initiative", but there are obvious short and long term financial benefits. Their added gross iPhone revenue so far is well over $1 billion per year, and, of course, they are able to capture additional sales on all the other 3G services they sell.

simon (not verified) | October 22, 2008 - 8:28am

I'm hanging on to my blackberry. When iphone will handle emails and messaging better i will opt for it.

but for now there's no chance

if communication is your main reason, then blackberry is the definitive choice.

if you just want to play and/or entertain yourself then iphone is for you.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 22, 2008 - 9:17am

i'm sorry but ive had to use a blackberry a couple of time for email and i thought it stunk, the effort just to look at an attached pdf for so bad, and when i finally used the little scroll thing and the menu to zoom in several times to view the text i realised it had actually 'optimized' the pdf so it was unreadable, tell me what on the blackberry email is better than the iphones, cause i just dont see it.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 22, 2008 - 1:57pm

I ditched my blackberry. The iPhone 2.1 email and calendar work great with my corporation's Exchange services. Now if Microsoft could only fix all the problems intrinsic to Exchange... like friggin' RULES. What kind of acid was Microsoft on when they designed the rules engine for Exchange??? "Let's make it super-sophisticated yet frustratingly limiting at the same time!" Ah, I digress.

My BlackBerry colleagues are fairly disappointed with their relatively new devices (and corporate policy - one device every 2 years. Sorry boys! Of course, we see a lot more broken BlackBerry devices now.)

The only problem is that now I do more work on the road than I ever had before.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 22, 2008 - 4:50pm

I have an BB 8800 for work and a personal iphone (Yeah it looks stupid with both on my belt). I can type much better and with a single hand on the BB. I regularly forward emails to the iPhone when I want to see an attachment. The BB does a very poor job with files. Especially word files with tables in it. iPhone handles that with easy. I keep work files (word and excel files) on the iPhone for reference. I disagree completely that the iPhones is only a toy.

Work does not allow the iPhone to Exchange. So I am caught in the middle.

ikir (not verified) | October 23, 2008 - 9:13am

IPhone is much more better for emails. You can say taht for SMS maybe... but not for emails.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 22, 2008 - 8:40am

You said AT&T sold 2.4 million of them, I got mine from Apple.

Benjamin Dobson | October 22, 2008 - 8:50am

That's awesome. Any idea on the O2 front?

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 22, 2008 - 1:05pm

Seems that AT&T is sacrificing short term profits for market share... check out:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/22/technology/att-iphone.fortune/index.htm

Inked1 (not verified) | October 22, 2008 - 5:47pm

Is it me or does the the AT&T graphic look like a Death Star.

Jason (not verified) | October 22, 2008 - 9:15pm

Inked1: That graphic looks like the Death Star *on purpose*. It's a joke that dates back to the 1980s, when AT&T dropped the "bell" logo for... the "death star" logo. Keep pedaling, and you'll catch up with the 1990s soon. :)

Seth: Your numbers don't add up. If total sales were 6.9M and AT&T's sales were 2.4M, then don't you think you should subtract *Apple's domestic* sales before you pronounce what overseas sales were?

Benjamin Dobson | October 23, 2008 - 8:44am