4.3 Million iPhones activated by AT&T in Q1 2012

The number of iPhones being sold in the market is staggering. In the first quarter of 2012, AT&T saw itself activating more than 4.3 million iPhones which is certainly a lot. This is a half a million increase as compared with the same quarter of the previous year. The fourth quarter on the other hand saw 7.6 million iPhones being activated which make sense considering that the iPhone 4S was released sometime earlier on that quarter.

4.3 million will certainly cost AT&T a lot of money especially considering that they would have to first fork out their own to subsidize the iPhone devices. However, in the long run, this will generate more money in return in terms of the contractual plans that the iPhone are tied with. In fact, AT&T might have already seen the impact of the previous iPhone sales because its revenue was up by 1.8 percent as compared with the previous year and reported an operating income of $6.1 billion which is also an increase of 4.9 percent.

AT&T also has one of the biggest iPhone activation in the United States market followed by Verizon at 3.2 million units. The result from Sprint is still unknown as their Q1 results will be released on April 25,2012.