On Thursday, AT&T reported that more than 4.1 million iPhones were activated in the first three months of its elite U.S. deal with Apple on the phone, but Apple shares suffered during early morning trading due to less subscriber growth than predicted.
During the 2010 4th fiscal quarter, AT&T reported $1.09 billion profits, which translated to 18 cents per share, and was much less than the $2.7 billion, or 46 cents per share profit which occurred last year during the same time frame. Even though more than 4 million iPhones were activated, Apple reported that it gained only 400,000 new contract customers in that time frame.
The numbers were less than what Wall Street had predicted by more than 100,000 subscribers. It was also less than the amount that Verizon had during a similar time frame, which numbered about 572,000 after you take away the activations from about 300,000 tablets, MiFi devices and other gadgets Verizon lists as post paid compared to AT&T’s listings as pre-paid. So, the shares of the Dallas, TX-based carrier went down more than three percent during Thursday’s morning trading session.
In better news, AT&T showed it kept additional areas of expected growth not related to the iPhone. Particulary, they reported adding 442,000 wireless 3G data users for tablets like the iPad, which was a lot more than they predicted.
Apple also said their wireless data profits — motivated by messaging, Internet access, access to applications and other services – went up $1.1 billion, or 27.4 percent, from the previous year’s quarter to $4.9 billion. Postpaid wireless users who used a monthly data plan went up 20.4 percent more than last year, and the amount of text messages carried on the AT&T network went up almost 29 percent to 173.1 billion. Plus, during that same time frame, multimedia messages went up 75.0 percent to 3.9 billion.
If you think head for the coming year, AT&T says they think their consolidated revenue growth will go up, but they gave no formal estimates since they are probably taking a wait-and-see attitude until they see how the Verizon’s iPhone launch will impact their wireless business as their rival carrier starts offering the iPhone to its own customers beginning on Feb. 10..
