While Apple was busy touting record iPhone sales during its third fiscal quarter earnings report on Tuesday, AT&T announced its own Q2 smartphone sales numbers. The cell service provider said it sold 6.8 million smartphones during the quarter, including a "record number" of Android devices. iPhone sales were up, but AT&T didn't offer any other details about Apple's combo smartphone and media player.
AT&T reported US$32.1 billion in revenue for the quarter with $3.8 in earnings, wireless revenue was up 5.7 percent year-over-year at $17.3 billion. 73 percent of the carrier's postpaid customers are now using smartphones, up 16 percent compared to the same quarter last year.
While AT&T didn't say how many iPhones it sold during the quarter, Verizon did. The number one cell service provider said its iPhone sales were up 44 percent year-over-year at 3.9 million units, and accounting for more than half of the carrier's quarterly smartphone sales.
AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega did say iPhone sales were up year-over-year, which is good news for both his company and Apple, although not sharing exact numbers is odd since the carrier has typically included iPhone activations in its quarterly earnings reports. During the first fiscal quarter of 2013, for example, the company sold 4.8 million iPhones.
TMO has reached out to AT&T for the quarter's iPhone and Android smartphone numbers, but haven't heard back as of yet.
Skipping over iPhone numbers while noting "record number" Android sales says one of a couple things: Even though iPhone sales were up, the numbers weren't high enough to warrant bragging, or AT&T is now more interested in promoting Android smartphones.
The iPhone continues to be a big seller, but that doesn't necessarily mean it brings in the same level of profits that other smartphones do. If that's the case, AT&T may simply be focusing on its big profit generating products.
To be fair, AT&T didn't break out Android sales, either. Maybe the company isn't interested in breaking out specific smartphone numbers any more.
Regardless of the reasoning behind holding back device-specific numbers, Android and iPhone sales were up for the quarter, and considering the growing popularity of smartphones, that adds up to good news for AT&T -- slightly vague good news, but good news none the less.