Contentinople - Erin Barker - News Bits: AT&T Activates 1.9M iPhones in Q4

Written by Erin Barker

Wednesday, January 28. 2009 at 11:35 AM EST Post a comment

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In fourth quarter 2009, AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) more than doubled its iPhone activations from last year's fourth quarter, going from less than 900,000 to 1.9 million.

AT&T announced last summer that it would subsidize the price of the Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone, bringing it down to $199 from $399 -- which perhaps led to 4.3 million new activations in the second half of 2008.

AT&T said iPhone-related costs amounted to $450 million during the quarter, but on the upside, iPhone subscribers spend 1.6 times what other subscribers spend on monthly service fees and have "significantly lower" churn rates, leading some to suggest that AT&T should subsidize the device even more.

AT&T's fourth-quarter net income was down 23.3 percent to $2.4 billion from the fourth quarter last year.

In other news:

Research company Decipher's survey of 2,700 WiFi users found that they access WiFi more often via smartphones (like the iPhone) than laptops. Notably, 81 percent prefer WiFi over 3G, and 82 percent want their service provider to offer special 3G/WiFi packages. So maybe iPhone users are getting tired of AT&T's sluggish 3G?

The ad that animal rights organization PETA prepared to promote the sexiness of vegetarianism to pork-rind-munching Superbowl audiences has been rejected by NBC Universal for being too naughty, PETA announced yesterday. NBC asked PETA to remove such things as shots of "licking eggplant" and "pumpkin from behind between legs" and other veggie innuendos we can't even mention here. The ad is now only available online here -- need I say NSFW?

Tags: Apple, AT&T, iPhone, NBC, Sports, Technology

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