The phone company said yesterday that its third-quarter net income rose 41 percent as the cellphone helped bring in new customers. AT&T’s wireless unit added two million subscribers in the third quarter, an increase of 47 percent, for a total of 65.7 million subscriptions. The wireless growth offset a 4.7 percent loss of the San Antonio company’s landline customers.
“We had an excellent quarter in wireless growth,” Richard Lindner, AT&T’s chief financial officer, said in a conference call with analysts. AT&T is clearly benefiting from Apple’s strong sales of the iPhone. It is the sole supplier of the cellphone service. AT&T said it had activated 1.1 million subscriptions for iPhone users, and that roughly 40 percent of those subscribers were new AT&T customers. Apple helped increase iPhone sales last month when it cut the price of the device from $599 to $399. AT&T reported net income of $3.06 billion, or 50 cents a share, in the third quarter, up from $2.17 billion, or 56 cents a share, in the same period last year. Revenue nearly doubled to $30.13 billion, from $15.6 billion in the quarter last year.
Source: NYTimes.com