iPhone provides modest boost to AT&T results: 3G iPhone due in November?

AT&T Inc. reported a strong quarter and said its mobile division activated 146,000 Apple Inc. iPhone customers in the first day and a half of the device’s release, more than 40% of whom were new customers for AT&T Mobility.
That figure was far fewer than the 500,000 iPhone activations that many analysts had estimated, but does not reflect sales for the entire weekend as the quarter ended on Saturday, June 30; the device began selling at 6 p.m. on June 29.
The Apple device was one of several boosts for AT&T’s second quarter earnings, which were up more than 60% year-over-year due primarily to its acquisition of BellSouth Corp. as well as gains on the wireless side.
AT&T’s stock was up slightly on the news to around $40 per share, but Apple’s stock was down more than 2% to around $140 per share on the lower-than-expected iPhone sales numbers.
However, investment-banking firm CIBC predicted a 3G-capable iPhone would arrive in the United States in November.
AT&T Mobility added 1.5 million new customers during the quarter, surpassing the 1.3 million net adds of rival Verizon Wireless, which was dragged down by a loss of 300,000 customers from its resellers and the mobile virtual network operator Amp’d Mobile Inc. Of its new customers, AT&T Mobility said that about 912,000 were postpaid subscribers. The carrier ended the quarter with 63.7 million wireless customers and added that sales of the iPhone “continue to be strong in July with store traffic above historical levels.” Business Technology Research analyst Ken Hyers wrote in a research note that the postpaid figures reflected AT&T Mobility’s strongest postpaid growth in three quarters.
The carrier’s churn rate improved as well, from 1.7% total and 1.5% postpaid in the year-ago quarter to 1.6% total churn and just 1.2% for postpaid subscribers.
Wireless service revenues were up nearly 15% year-over-year to $9.5 billion, and wireless data revenue was up about 67% from the year prior, to $1.7 billion. AT&T Mobility had about 39 million active data users at the end of the second quarter, the company reported, reflecting growth of 39% in the past year. Total wireless average revenue per user was $50.63, up 3.6% from 2006’s second quarter.