It was a case of "good news, bad news" at AT&T today. The good news is that the wireless carrier announced this morning that it has already activated 1 million of Apple"s iPhone 4S units which AT&T claims makes the release of the phone the most successful of any of its iPhone launches. AT&T used the press release to gloat a bit, saying that its network has data speeds that are twice as fast as those for iPhone 4S customers on Verizon and Sprint.
AT&T"s bad news was also announced this morning as the company revealed its finacial results for the quarter that ended on September 30. AT&T tried to put a good spin on things, but investors zeroed in on the news that AT&T only activated 2.7 million iPhones during the quarter. That"s the lowest number of iPhone activations in over a year. It"s likely that the lower numbers were due to customers who were waiting for the launch of the iPhone 4S. AT&T"s stock price is currently down slightly as of this news post.
The company announced it had $31.48 billion in revenue for the last quarter, slightly down from the $31.58 billion it recorded at the same time period a year ago. Those numbers were also below analysts" expectations. AT&T recorded a profit of $3.6 billion for the quarter which was in line with expectations. The company said it also gained a total of 2.1 million new wireless subscribers in the last quarter which brought its total number of subscribers over the 100 million mark for the first time.