April 24, 2009
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ATT Profits Rise Due to iPhone.
It’s official: The iPhone is a recession-defying powerhouse, fueling strong quarterly results for both AT&T and Apple.
AT&T, which pays Apple about $300 for every device sold, added 1.2 million wireless subscribers, ending the quarter with 78.2 million. That propelled its first-quarter profit of $3.1 billion, or 53 cents per share — topping analysts’ expectations of 48 cents per share. $300 is a small price to pay for the new subscribers and those subscribers are using a great deal of ATT services.
High-profit mobile data usage jumped 39% to $3.2 billion. Text messages more than doubled to 94 billion. The iPhone drove much of that traffic.
AT&T said it signed up 1.6 million iPhone customers in the quarter — more than 40% of them new to AT&T.
Apple had its best non-holiday quarter: a 15% jump in second-quarter profit that beat Wall Street expectations. Sales of iPhones more than doubled, to 3.79 million, from a year ago.
