AT&T activated 146,000 iPhone subscribers in the last two days of the quarter
While we will hopefully get some iPhone sales figures from Apple tomorrow during their Q3 financial conference call, AT&T has provided a glimpse at what we should expect. According to TheStreet, AT&T activated 146,000 iPhone subscribers in the last two days of the quarter.
Of course, by “last 2 days of the quarter”, they mean Friday June 29th and Saturday June 30th. Since the iPhone only went on sale at 6PM on June 29th, that means in a 30-hour period AT&T activated close to 150,000 iPhones. Obviously this would not include any online sales via the Apple Store which of course could not be activated over the weekend.
So, is that good or bad? Obviously, activations aren’t the same as sales. More iPhones were of course sold than activated, and AT&T had quite a bit of trouble activating all the iPhones that did try to get hooked up that first day (including ours).
Still, it looks like on that opening weekend Apple likely did come close to meeting the 300,000 mark originally set by analysts (a few crazy mo-fos later raised expectations to 500,000 to 700,000!). AT&T went on to say “sales of the iPhone continue to be strong in July with store traffic above historical levels.” All in all, it looks like this initial report, combined with Apple’s alleged iPhone revenue sharing deal, paint a rosy picture for the iPhone’s future and Apple’s bottom line.