AT&T Q2 2011: 3.6m iPhone Activations, Smartphone Sales Dominate

AT&T has announced its Q2 2011 financial results, and it makes for happier reading than Nokia's figures from earlier today. The carrier saw $31.5bn in revenue – up 2.2-percent from the same period last year – and sold 5.6m smartphones, with ARPU (average revenue per user) climbing 2-percent to $63.87. Of those smartphones, 3.6m were Apple's iPhone.

However, it was a strong showing for smartphones across the board, with sales increasing by in excess of 43-percent year-on-year. Non-iPhone smartphone sales more than doubled, in fact, and only around 30-percent of AT&T's postpaid device sales were featurephones. That pushed the total smartphone ownership split to 49.9-percent of the carrier's 68.4m postpaid subscribers.

Data use increased too, in fact by more than $1bn, while text messages jumped 24-percent and MMS messages more than doubled to 4bn in the three month period. 545,000 of what AT&T describes as "branded computing subscribers" joined; that is, tablets, modems, MiFi devices and tethering plans. The bulk were tablets, 377,000 of which were added (30-percent on postpaid plans) to bring the total amount to 4m.

AT&T now has 98.6m subscribers, that number rising by 1.1m in Q2 2011.