“AT&T Inc.’s first-quarter earnings rose 5.2% as fewer people canceled telecom services, though revenue grew more slowly than expected,” Melodie Warner reports for The Wall Street Journal. “San Antonio-based AT&T on Tuesday reported a profit of $3.58 billion, or 60 cents a share, up from $3.41 billion, or 57 cents, a year earlier. Revenue rose 1.8% to $31.82 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters forecast earnings of 57 cents on revenue of $31.86 billion.”
“AT&T added 187,000 customers who signed long-term service contracts. The company also added 726,000 total wireless subscribers, raising its base to 103.9 million,” Warner reports. “Total postpaid churn, or customers who canceled services, was 1.1%, down from 1.18% a year earlier and 1.21% in the prior quarter.”
Warner reports, “The company sold 5.5 million smartphones, including 4.3 million iPhone activations. Of those activating iPhones, 21% were new to AT&T. AT&T’s subscribership gains had outpaced its rivals on the success of Apple Inc.’s iPhone, but it lost iPhone exclusivity last year, which has pressured its customer-turnover and growth rates of late.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Over 78% of the smartphones sold by AT&T last quarter were Apple iPhones. No wonder AT&T is constantly trying to push pretend iPhones in order to lessen their dependence on Apple.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Wow!
BAM!!
Just wait till the new iPhone comes out ( liquidmetal?, bigger screen ? Better optics? New design? IOS 6, and all those 4 coming off Contract ) apple 1000 a share …..
cool. But why do you think the value oa a company or it’s products will effect its stock price??, 🙂
En
don’t sales equal more earnings? And keeping android at bay with a new phone will drive earnings…and the stock price?
So why would they want to sleight their meal ticket??!
Android’s winning?
Not so much. When the iPhone outsold Android during the holiday season everyone said it wouldn’t last and it was because of the new 4S release. Now we see that it IS lasting, 78% of the activations are an iPhone and around 51% on Verizon. That’s insane and it’s only going to grow this Fall when the new iPhone comes out.
So much for iPhone sales being down.
Guess the analysts/market believing the Telcos are about to cut back on the subsidies they’re paying on iPhones, missed this memo.
I suppose they get their staff to push other phones to give them something to do. iPhones sell themselves. They’re probably not ready to have no staff in shops.
Then again: Microsoft are again paying developers to write software for their crapware, this time Metro.
So what if Microsoft are also PAYING AT&T to push MS StupidSmartPhones, aka ‘incentivizing’ Metro phone sales??? Microsoft never compete if they can find a way to cheat. That’s the summary of their corporate history.
Holy Droids Suck, Fellows! That’s a high percentage!
Apple will set iPhone prices where they want to. The subsidy amount is negotiated between the customer and the telco. If telcos like AT&T don’t like the price then don’t sell iPhones and let you business wither and die. Simple.
MDN’s take is incorrect. AT&T isn’t against Apple’s dependence. AT&T is simply trying to maximize profits by promoting the other phones to the lower end users. iPhones, like most things Apple, sell themselves.
There is a point there MEES!
If AT&T see there is a low end user market available for sales that does not cannibalize the high end iPhone market… then my rant below becomes invalid. But it is sickening to think of low end users getting ‘incentivized’ to buy MS StupidSmartPhones. The horror…
MDN sez: Over 78% of the smartphones sold by AT&T last quarter were Apple iPhones. No wonder AT&T is constantly trying to push pretend iPhones in order to lessen their dependence on Apple.
Could AT&T be worse biznizz bozos?
A) Bite the hand that feeds you.
B) Push SimpletonSmartPhones that don’t make you as much net profit.
Brilliant.
Would someone please kill AT&T, again, and put them out of our misery?! What a fracked up, dumbass company.
Then again, what mobile company is actually worth supporting these days? Where I live, all of them suck in their own unique and individual way. 😛