Oh boy…does AT&T need the iPhone to keep its business going or what? In the third quarter, the company added 2 million new wireless subscribers to reach a total of 81.6 million. Further, some 4.3 million 3G-integrated devices were added to the AT&T network, of which the iPhone accounted for 3.2 million activations. And thanks to that, wireless data revenues jumped 33.6 percent over the previous year, to $3.6 billion, thus helping push the ARPU up by 3.8 percent from the same quarter last year.
The rest of AT&T’s business doesn’t look quite as pretty. Revenues for the quarter were $30.9 billion vs. $31.3 billion in the third quarter of 2008. Net income was flat at $3.2 billion. In other words, apart from the iPhone and U-verse TV, there isn’t much for AT&T to get excited about.
For instance, while the company added 252,000 U-verse connections, it lost enough DSL subscribers that the final tally for new broadband subscribers during the most recent three-month period stood at mere 90,000. AT&T now has 1.8 million U-verse TV customers. Consumer voice connections, meanwhile, fell to 45.7 million from 46.3 million in the second quarter. AT&T had 47.5 million voice connections in the third quarter of 2008. (Previously: Why AT&T Is Desperately Addicted to the iPhone and AT&T Beholden to Steve & the iPhone.)
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