AT&T activates 146k iPhones in Q2, Wall Street frowns
By Darren Murph 
posted Jul 24th 2007 1:18PM
posted Jul 24th 2007 1:18PM
While earlier estimates suggested that AT&T would make out like gangbusters considering just how many iPhones it reportedly moved as Q2 came to a close, investors aren't reacting fondly to the firm's latest report. Even though the telco posted a $2.9 billion increase in net income and sales of $29.5 billion, it "only" managed to activate 146,000 iPhones -- which sent Apple's stock tumbling up to 6% (read: billions). Notably, some 40-percent of those iPhone buyers were new to AT&T, which helped to slash customer turnover to a record low, but it's not surprise with previous estimates as high as 1m+ iPhones sold, these numbers didn't exactly impress Wall Street; Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst Gene Munster even went so far as to call the amount of iPhone activations "a disappointment."[Via mocoNews]
I think that it can be seen both ways, but it is clear that iPhone hysteria has worn off and units are not moving as well as in the beginning. Does anyone think this could mean iPhone price cuts in the near future to drive lagging sales?
Verizon added 1.6 million. even with the iphone crap they still cannot outdo Verizon.
Verizon added 1.3 million subscribers in Q2 2007 - http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/AFX-0013-18250375.htm
AT&T added 1.5 million subscribers in Q2 2007 - http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=24132
Verizon added 1.6 million subscribers in Q1 2007 - http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=122848
AT&T added 1.8 million subscribers in Q1 2007 - http://seekingalpha.com/article/33332
Um... for Q1, 1.8mil > 1.6mil and for Q2, 1.5mil > 1.3mil.
I don't know what you mean by "outdo" but AT&T are adding more customers than Verizon.
Remember that the 1.8 Million At&t claims is a lot of pre-paid and rebrand.. etc. Verizon Wireless actually has more retail customers that choose its brand than AT&T, that figure weeds out things like Amp'd, Tracfone, or any other MVNO. So more people choose the name Verizon Wireless than choose At&t. All this prepaid etc that At&t does will eventually catch up to them.
Here is some proof to back my claim up
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb4962/is_200705/ai_n19232684
This is an article from RCR on Q1 2007 for the big 3.
Verizon Wireless 1.7 million net adds vs At&t 1.2 million net adds
146,000 iPhones actually doesn't sound like a whole hell of a lot. What happened to 500,000 in the first weekend?
The title of this post is terribly misleading. Assuming that AT&T did not have to pay a dollar for the iPhone from Apple, the amount AT&T made was about 87 million dollars ($599 x 146,000). That is about 3 percent of AT&T's overall profit of 2.9 billion dollars. Obvious, Apple didn't give away the iPhone to AT&T so that number is going to be less. I don't know how you can say profits soared because of the iPhone.
It's odd that it is worded 146,000 activations. I wonder how many were unable to activate till Monday or Tuesday, even though they were purchased on Friday thru Sunday. I would actually be more interested in the actual sales those three days, and up till now.
AT&T profits were not up largely on iPhones sales. It was earnings related to the Bell South acquisition that caused profits to ride high.
The iPhone adds were somewhat disappointing given the huge hype surrounding this product. Although results did not include Sunday June 30th, there is no indication that results would of been changed dramaticaly.
EDIT to above:
I meant Sunday July 1st which was the start of Q3. I accidentally wrote Sunday June 30th.
i wonder how much profit they made minus the cost of the edge network upgrade + the advertising every 5 minutes
and although they won't admit it, this was the first full quarter with the new pay cut that Cingular employees were hit with. that had to have saved MILLIONS
according to Forbes.com, the iPhone wasn't that great of thing for ATT
http://www.forbes.com/markets/2007/07/24/att-iphone-apple-markets-equity-cx_er_0724markets13.html
When the next one comes out next year or the iPod comes out this winter, people will realize how much they wasted on it :P.
I like the iPhone for the iPod features. That's it. It's not a smartphone. It's a locked, flashy feature-phone.
JAmerican
2nd quarter ended June 20, 2007, so AT&T added 146,000 customer from launch of 6-29 to 6-30? Not bad. The rest of the 500,000 will be added to their Q3 results. Strong company... The deathstar is strong.
What paycut are you talking about Will? I have been with cing for 2years now and have not seen a paycut since AT&T took over 100% this past Dec. We are part of the CWA, the name change has nothing to do w/ our wage or benefits we are still under contract.. everything besides the internal name stays the same and we were already 60% AT&T before the merger.
These #'s are just for activations. Some folks werent able to activate their iphones due to an issue w/ the activation servers which was resolved on Monday, July 2nd. Lets not mention the port-ins from T-Mo and verizon that will show up in the 3Q stats. Even if there were just 140k activations on friday and saturday that is still a huge # for the amount of people activating their phone in a 30 hour period.
According the Apple the activation problem only affected less than 5% of iPhone buyers. So what happened to the 500K to 700K number that was floated around by some analysts (I believe it was mostly the moron Piper Jeffrey guy, that also said most iPhone buyers own Macs and buy the 8GB model, based on his "unofficial" poll while waiting in line with the other geeks). Question: how many times a day do you need to recharge your gayPhone ?
I believe most people are overlooking the fact that the 146,000 was over 2 days!!! Selling almost 150k of anything at 600 bucks a pop is pretty damn good to me especially when you consider it's not a gaming system but a cell phone. The real number to consider is now many were sold the first week of retail and how many to date. Also consider that web sales were not shipping the first week of retail.