AT&T keeps iPhone demand up in late 2009

AT&T this morning contributed to the slew of corporate results this week and said it had one of its best fall quarters in recent memory. In late 2009, the company added 2.7 million new cellular customers and says it activated a total 3.1 million iPhones; the totals are the second-best in its history both for total additions as well as iPhone activations, falling just short of the record 3.2 million Apple devices from the summer. It now has a total of 85.1 million customers and grew faster than Verizon, closing the gap between the two by 500,000 subscribers.

While it's not clear how many iPhone customers left the network, the smartphone helped play a part in other positives for AT&T's quarter. Its presence now means that almost half -- 46.4 percent -- of the 65.1 million subscription phones on the network are "integrated devices" that have 3G and QWERTY keyboards. Wireless data revenue also soared 26.3 percent to $3.9 billion, and the average revenue per person increased a slight amount to just over $61, helped mostly by a 17.5 percent lift to the spending on data plans.

The carrier achieved its best-ever turnover rate for the fall and saw a churn of just 1.19 percent for subscription phone users, which while higher than Verizon's was a sixth consecutive quarter of drops in the number of old customers being replaced by new.

As a whole, the company was significantly more profitable and mustered a net income of $3 billion versus $2.4 billion a year ago; it also trimmed its operating expenses down very slightly to exactly $26 billion despite activating about twice as many iPhones and adding 1 million more devices with "free" 3G, such as the Barnes & Noble Nook.

For Apple, the news is an important win as it represents almost no drop-off in the US for launch sales. Last year, iPhone 3G activations fell sharply at AT&T from summer to fall.

By Electronista Staff