The iPhone, as predicted, gave AT&T a hefty added chunk of change to their bottom line. Sweet, sweet sounds of profit, anyone?

IDG News had the rundown on AT&T’s latest reported growth – seeing boosts in net income and revenue for the second quarter of 2008. Pity it had to be the iPhone’s publicity hoopla that inspired it. The iPhone may be the kind of trick pony that tapdances, plays the harmonica, and wears a snazzy jacket and tie but how much longer can AT&T hitch their fortune wagon to it?

Perhaps for a while AT&T can make themselves happy with its numbers – reported net income of US $3.8 billion for the second quarter, up 31 percent from the equivalent last year. Net income went up to $4.5 billion from $4.3 billion and revenue at $30.9 billion is up 4.7 percent.

And what would reporting be without the usual carefully worded soundbyte from AT&T. Attributed to Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chairman and CEO:

"AT&T is all about deploying and enhancing premier networks and products to deliver this world to both business and consumers…the Apple iPhone 3G is a dramatic example of this transformation."

Translation: we picked the right horse and it won us the derby, y’all.

But it’s not fair to say the iPhone’s AT&T’s only cash cow. It reported healthy increase in mobile revenue to $12 billion (15.8 percent increase) and mobile service revenue shot up another 14.8 percent. Wireless data revenue also prospered by another whopping 52 percent to $2.5 billion while text messaging volumes actually tripled from last year’s second quarter. The only thing that saw falling numbers was wireline voice revenue, but hey, all the text volume will probably make up for that.

Slightly less exciting – AT&T’s report that 170,000 new customers signed up for its U-verse TV service, delivering shows over IP networks. That makes it a total of 549,000 subscribers watching TV over the Net.

AT&T’s currently doing a good job attempting to bludgeon the competition into submission. With the iPhone’s appeal, mobile data’s never been sexier and soon surfing on your mobile will officially leave novelty-status.

Related:

Sell Your iPhone 1.0 while you still can, still hot items on eBay and Craigslist

China Mobile wants iPhones, OPhones

AT&T offering refurbished iPhones for $199 with new activations

iPhone firmware 2.0 already jailbroken

Gray market iPhones appearing in Asia

Entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 10:33 am under News, iPhone.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Erna Mahyuni.
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