AT&T Sells 20% Of iPhones

Sites include Apple.com , ATT.com . Published on February 8th, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

When you are a telecoms carrier in a very competitive market, you need all the advantages you can get. And the partnership between Apple and AT&T has proven a winner—for both parties.

According to the recent earnings figures released by AT&T, the company had a stellar year in 2011, and was only marred by the failed acquisition of T-Mobile—a failure by the way which cost the telecoms giant over $4 billion. Fourth quarter profits were $0.42 a share on revenues of $32.5 billion, numbers that bettered slightly, the $0.43 and $32 billion that was projected by analysts.

AT&T saw better than expected smartphone sales and had a solid year selling Apple’s iPhone and Android devices. So spectacular was the sale of iPhones that AT&T alone accounted for more than 20% of all sales of the iPhone in the US. In all, AT&T activated more than 7.6 million handsets—the bulk of which were the new 4S model.

I suppose we can expect more revenue fireworks in Q3 2012, because Apple is set to drop the iPhone 5 this summer and the expectation is that a new record for Apple handset sales will be set. It will also mark the first launch of an iPhone which the late Steve Jobs won’t deliver—this alone will add a few million sentimental purchases at least.

Are you getting the iPhone 5 when it comes out? Share your thoughts about the upcoming release using the comments below.