AT&T, iPhone very much joined at the hip
When you walk into an AT&T retail outlet, you will see a lot of Android devices. In fact, the majority of the store will be dedicated to devices other than the iPhone, which is exactly the opposite of what you would expect given the carrier’s actual sales and activation numbers.
Blorge has covered this before — the iPhone is mobile at AT&T. In that write up, we quoted an insider who claimed that 66 percent of December smartphone sales at Ma Bell’s retail stores were iPhones.
We now know that estimate was actually well short of the mark.
AT&T has said in its quarterly results that 80 percent of its 9.4 million activations in the last frame of 2011 were iPhones. Further, Ma Bell’s 7.6 million iPhone activations account for 20.5 percent of the 37 million smartphones Cupertino sold in the holiday quarter.
Apple’s original carrier partner certainly has staying power.
And, the other 20 percent?
Although it might seem reasonable to assume that the other one-in-five AT&T activations were Android devices, that wouldn’t be correct. In fact, ordinary feature phones still outsell those running some version of Google’s mobile operating system at Ma Bell.
This discordant data point is bolstered by the fact that Java ME-powered dumb phones still generate more web traffic worldwide, as measured by Net Applications, than Android devices.
So, who exactly is buying and, one presumes, using the 700,000 new per day Android devices Google claims are getting sold? It really makes you wonder…
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