Post third quarter sales results, AT&T is leading the iPhone 5 sales charts in the United States. According to Ralph de la Vega, the carrier has sold close to 1.3 million units, nearly double that of its biggest rival, Verizon Wireless, a little over six hundred and fifty thousand iPhones. Sprint Nextel will release its results this Thursday.
AT&T’s enormous dependence on Apple for its growth is further reinforced by the 4.7 million iPhones it sold in Q3, a majority of its sales. But, much like Verizon, a major chunk of these sales can mostly be attributed to the older iPhone 4S.
AT&T blames the lack of lasting high sales orders on the supply-side shortage during the first ten days after it became available. Despite initial pre-orders skyrocketing, the growth of subscribers for the latest iPhone was limited, owing to the shortage of units for sale, since most of the first batch of devices were snapped up by upgraders. AT&T could manage to add only a little over one fifty thousand subscribers to its ledgers, whereas its biggest competitor Verizon roped in one and a half million subscribers, in the same time period. Craig Moffett, an analyst at Bernstein, summarised by saying that AT&T is no longer a share gainer.
Lesser than expected sales from AT&T as well as Verizon are likely to affect Apple’s quarterly results adversely. AT&T’s is expected to respond to the sharp decline by selling even more iPhones and other devices like tablets in the fourth quarter. All these results and predictions emphasize the extreme dependence of the mobile world on smartphones in general and the iPhone in particular.
De la Vega said that sixty four percent of its customer base owns smartphones, with smartphones making up eighty percent of sales. Also, the company has sold a tad over six million smartphones this quarter, up from 4.8 million a year ago.
However, this extreme dependence on the iPhone comes with a price. AT&T pays huge amounts in subsidies to the smartphone maker, more than it does to any other phone maker. This hits AT&T drastically since they have the biggest iPhone sales, quarter after quarter. But, the company will soon be looking at combatting this issue by offering a wider range of handsets from companies ranging from HTC and Samsung to LG and Sony. The Nokia Lumia 920 is looking promising too and will probably prop up sales of non-iPhone handsets in the coming quarters.
