In another sign consumers were waiting for the new iPhone 4S, AT&T Thursday said iPhone activations dropped in the third quarter. However, since Tuesday, the carrier announced 1M iPhone 4S units were activated, making it the company’s best-selling Apple handset.
The first U.S. carrier to offer the iPhone in 2007, the Dallas-based company now is the only to offer the iPhone 4S with “4G” speed. Still unknown is how Verizon’s subscriber numbers were affected by Apple’s addition of Sprint as a U.S. iPhone carrier.
A possible clue is the apparent return of contract subscribers during the third quarter, after dipping upon Verizon Wireless gaining the iPhone earlier this year. The carrier announced a net gain of 384,000 contract subscribers after reporting a first-quarter gain of just 62,000 contract customers.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
