AT&T iPhone 4S activations top 1 million

By on Oct 20, 2011 at 9:06 AM
Breaking October 20, 2011

And the disappointments keep on coming… AT&T on Thursday announced that it has now activated more than 1 million iPhone 4S handsets. ”It’s no surprise that customers are clamoring for the iPhone 4S and they want it to run on a network that lets them download twice as fast as competitors’,” said AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega in a statement. Apple announced on Monday that opening-weekend sales of its new iPhone 4S handset surpassed 4 million units, and AT&T reported last Friday that it had activated a record number of iPhones on the device’s first day of sales. Sprint also confirmed that October 14th, the day it released Apple’s iPhone 4S and iPhone 4, marked the best-ever sales day for a single line of devices in the carrier’s history. AT&T’s full press release follows below.

AT&T Activates One Million iPhone 4S’

Activations Surpass All Previous Launches

Customers Prefer AT&T Speed Advantage

DALLAS, Oct. 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ – AT&T * today announced it activated more than 1 million iPhone 4S’ as of Tuesday, making it the most successful iPhone launch in the company’s history.  AT&T was the first carrier in the world to launch iPhone in 2007 and is the only U.S. carrier to support iPhone 4Swith 4G speeds.

“It’s no surprise that customers are clamoring for the iPhone 4S and they want it to run on a network that lets them download twice as fast as competitors’,” said Ralph de la Vega, President and CEO, AT&T Mobility & Consumer Markets.

AT&T’s speed advantage, and the unique ability to talk and surf at the same time, has been roundly praised by industry pundits.

Additional information can be found at www.att.com/iphone.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

Tags:
, , , , , , , ,
67 Comments

Related Articles

  • D.Khine

    I wonder what VZ at. 

  • Bringit

    Everybody wants one.

    • Delusion FTL

      And by everyone you mean approx 1% of att’s subscriber base right?  The same carrier that has 20-30+ million current iphone users that have not bothered to upgrade.

      I’ll say it again. It may be a record.  It may be impressive, but it’s not what analysts expected for the most anticipated phone this year.

      • Anonymous

        Um, analysts suggested 3M iPhones over the weekend; Apple sold 4M.

        Also, 20-30M iPhone customers on AT&T seems high. That’s like 1 in 10 Americans.

        Also, I know many people had their upgrade eligibility moved to the holidays.

      • Anonymous

        i’m betting its more like 10 million iphone users on ATT.  maybe a bit less.  they have 100 million customers but what percentage are smartphone users? 35%? and only a third at most have an iphone?

        so 1/3rd of 35M is about 12 million.  BUt i think its pretty safe to say that its not actually that many.  10 million is just a guess, but probably closer to actual.

      • Bullet Tooth Tony

        “52.6 percent of AT&T’s 68.6 million postpaid subscribers had smartphones, up from 39.1 percent a year earlier and 31.1 percent two years ago.”

        …in other words, dcyamaha, I’d say you made a damn good guess.

      • Delusion FTL

        I have no clue where your guesses are coming from. I use industry metrics. ATT claims they sell around 3 to 5 million iphones per quarter (~40,000+ a day) or around 15-20 million a year.  ATT’s smartphone split is very heavy tilted towards iphones, some reports I’ve read say upwards of 50-60% with the remainder being android and blackberry.

      • Bringit

        Your reply is littered with malware and false information – similar to Android.

      • Bringit

        Everybody WANTS one, not everyone can have one.  Moms like the free cheap Android options for the kids.

      • Logic

        why not get a 4 then?

      • Anonymous

        Maybe because they all have an iphone 4 and cannot upgrade.

  • Anonymous

    Apple will rule the world. 👊😜 true story™©®

    • Anonymous

      zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

    • Generatione

      BGR: get over it. The iPhone 4S was disappointing, period. Just because loyalists are buying it doesn’t mean millions more were disappointed (like myself).

      • Anonymous

        Four million sold in 2 days and probably 25 in the quarter. Yes it’s very disappointing.

      • http://apple.com Yes_iHave_an_iPhone

        It’s just like the new Madden football games.. Yeah they’re disappointing but everyone still buys them!

  • Githo

    Can someone please help me understand the numbers? Is this number for new customers, or upgrades? What constitutes an “activation”?

    Thanks

    • Anonymous

      An activation would mean AT&T activated a SIM card on an iPhone, transferring a phone number to it. It would include those who upgraded along with new customers.

  • John

    in other more important news,  can’t wait for ICS + the new nexus!!!!

  • Steel

    Marketing: …So, we can claim that our iPhone runs on data twice as fast as others.
    Ralph:  But how?  That’s not true, is it?  Our data is 3g and their network is 4g LTE?
    Marketing: True, but Apple didn’t put a 4g radio in this new phone.  So, we can just compare 3g to 3g, essentially who has the fastest network for this phone, not overall.
    Ralph:  But, if we were comparing our “4g” android phone against theirs?
    Marketing:  We don’t do that.

    • Anonymous

      Hdpa+ is 4g officially.

      • Anonymous

        Like all 4G, it would be nice if they had it in my area.

      • Anonymous

        My area only has VZW LTE

  • Bigwang

    1 million people are brain dead and don’t realize the power of ICS

    • http://www.droiddoes.com/ Norm

      Or 1 million people aren’t losers like you?

      • Bigwang

        lol coming from someone who is the biggest troll

    • Anonymous

      Stop abbreviating it and just call it by its silly name.

      “You don’t know the POWER of the… processed frozen children’s dessert? Really, is that the line? I mean [mechanical breaths]…”

    • Anonymous

      What power do you speak of?

      • Chrisd26

        The nexus is a joke

    • http://www.sakurawalker.com iEric

      International Chili Society?

    • Anonymous

      Yes the power of ICS. The power of more lag. The power of the crash. The power of the freeze. The power of having a 6 month old phone and not getting the update at all. The power of running shitty flash. The power of having no organization and shitty apps. The power of battery management ie 5-6 battery life on standby. The power google watching your every move. These are the powers of android that I have experienced with the android phone I had. OMG the power.

  • Shamwidch

    You forgot to mention, that AT&T also doubled it Android sales… 

    • Anonymous

      So, 100 Android phones sold? Sweet.

  • Eric

    I prefer better coverage and call quality so I went with Verizon. My friends can hear me now.

    • Bullet Tooth Tony

      So in other words, you didn’t get Verizon… their call quality is dog shit… EVRC-B is the absolute worst.  Either that, or you’re deaf and Verizon has a better TTY font…

  • Delacy Sanford

    so ummm i guess at&t’s network isnt as bad as the media proclaims…go figure

  • Anonymous

    I don’t know what they did, but the call clarity is excellent now, even on AT&T.

    Still drop calls, but still.

    • Anonymous

      I’m sure people drop calls on every carrier. I had Verizon and I had dropped calls at least once a week in my area. It sucks but it’s not the end of the world, just call the person back.

  • Anonymous

    i’m a little confused by the “disappointment” reference :-S

    are they trying to imply 1 million was activated on ATT only compared to 4 million in total sales? or being sarcastic that 1 million is a huge success? (either way it seems like the bulk went to the other 2 carriers)

  • http://twitter.com/blitzcat blitzcat

    So if there were 4 million sold in a weekend, and AT&T only got 1 million… AT&T LOST.
     
    Sprint and Verizon split the remaining 3 million customers.

    VZ already had the Iphone, so the would also have a lower pool of waiting customers.

    Sprint won. :<

    • Anonymous

      Uhmmm The 4 mill included international… VZ and Sprint lost… Most of Apple revenue comes from abroad

    • Anonymous

      that was 4 million worldwide so ATT is actually winning because im sure no other carrier activated a million.

  • Max

    Read it and weep, you Blackberry RIMjobbing MORONS. You deny yourself an incredible smartphone all because of a stupid keyboard, brickbreaker, and BBM??? Seriously? You don’t need apps? Have you seen the incredible apps available that aren’t games or fart apps? You couldn’t have because you’d realize how useful they are. But hey, you are the kind of guy who lives in 2001, probably still has longer hair, wears Levis or some other inexpensive brand, maybe even parachute pants. You’re a relic. BB should never have catered to you. It’s a losing proposition to cater to morons who never upgrade and live in 2002.

    • Bullet Tooth Tony

      How could you include Brick Breaker and leave off Word Mole?  Hater…. ;-)

    • Applesucksfatties

      Shouldn’t you be helping RIMFAIL pick up the garbage around the trailer park that you both live in?  

      On a side note, I found your attempt to summarize the average BlackBerry user rather humorous…yet incredibly stupid.  It has been proven in studies that BlackBerry users have higher personal incomes than iToy or crapDroid users.  

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_XIS3JBTINBBDVPE4GN2FUWUOGM Rich Wood

    I’ve used a lot of different smart phones including Blackberries and Androids. I bought the iPhone 4S just to see what the Apple hype is all about. Honestly after experiencing it for myself I don’t get the hype. My previous phone was the HTC Incredible 2 running Android Froyo. Compared to that, I find myself clicking and swiping a lot more to do the same tasks on the iPhone. It actually feels a lot clunkier to me. 

    Just a few examples.

    Let’s say I’m in an app and click on a link that takes me to a web page. There’s no quick way to get back to the previous app. I have to go back to the home screen. With Android it’s a single click on the back arrow.

    Contrary to the opinion of the boy genius, notifications are NOT better than they were with my HTC. With the HTC I could pull down the notification bar and not only see/clear notifications, there were links to recent applications and common settings. The iPhone notifications bar is a bit useless.

    Maps/Navigation is hands down better with Android — absolutely no comparison.

    In order to extend the battery I got the Mophie Juice Jack which makes the phone enormous. With Android phones I’ve used the extra bulk was limited to the battery itself.

    It’s not a bad device and I’ll give it a few more days but at this point I am leaning toward returning it.

    • Logic

      Seems like an honest review, pretty rare for this site.  There are also people complaining about the screen not being as bright as the iphone 4 was and that siri stops working and needs to be turned off and on to get it to work again. 

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_XIS3JBTINBBDVPE4GN2FUWUOGM Rich Wood

        I had that experience with Siri and my Jawbone ERA. After a few questions it stopped working and I had to restart the phone to get it to work again. Not that big a deal except for Apple’s reputation as being rock solid. Actually I had some very unfriendly errors trying to get iTunes/iCloud to work.

        Thanks for the tip about double tapping the home button to see recent apps.

    • Anonymous

      “Let’s say I’m in an app and click on a link that takes me to a web page. There’s no quick way to get back to the previous app. I have to go back to the home screen. With Android it’s a single click on the back arrow.”

      Double click the home button to pull up the recently used apps to go back to any of them. 

      “Contrary to the opinion of the boy genius, notifications are NOT better than they were with my HTC. With the HTC I could pull down the notification bar and not only see/clear notifications, there were links to recent applications and common settings. The iPhone notifications bar is a bit useless.” 

      I am confused links to recent applications in notifications? Maybe you can explain in detail 

      Maps/Navigation is hands down better with Android — absolutely no comparison. 

      No doubt, bunch of free great Navigation apps and even map apps. Google hasn’t updated the native iOS app since launch. They keep the good stuff Native to Android, which is fine, it is their service and technology. They don’t have to share the best stuff with competing platforms. Apple is hopefully taking steps to make it better with or without Google. 

      “In order to extend the battery I got the Mophie Juice Jack which makes the phone enormous. With Android phones I’ve used the extra bulk was limited to the battery itself.”

      I t would never recommend a juice pack, personally I use a small charged hub that charges up to 4 devices at once via usb cable. Slide it to my sport coat and can charge anywhere I have the need. The days I am in the car a lot I just leave connected to the car charger

      • Anonymous

        You clearly don’t know how to use an iPhone. And even with the Bulk of the battery in the Incredible it still can’t make it through a whole day.

      • Anonymous

        I use navigation daily, stream hours of audio, stream video, access my office and home Mac’s on the go, use iWork daily, make tons of calls daily, use FaceTime over 3G (Jailbreak until iOS 5) few times a week or Fring, always browsing the web, and check my email hourly. Also the occasional game at launch. I hit about 10% on the commute home but car charger or portable charger works very well. 

      • Anonymous

        i would say out of your post you havent played around with your iphone enough.  i like iPhone notifications as a whole better but i do like that android has the connections there to quickly turn off wifi and so forth.  the default maps app is without question miles ahead of the iOS version but that stands to reason since thats a google product but its easy to get a app that is better than even the default google maps.  i have a pocket battery pack that i can charge and it will charge my iphone back up but truthfully i havent used it in about 2 years when i knew it was gonna be an all day heavy use of the phone type of day.

      • Anonymous

        I am just waiting for a jailbreak my friend to add the settings to notification center, I use to use SBSettings religiously because the easy toggle for settings. It is the only thing I ever envied from Android. 

        I was addressing the post above me from 
        Rich Wood

      • Anonymous

        well actually you wouldnt need sb settings since the notification window is there but they have a couple of cydia apps that adds the quick toggles to the notification center

  • zacamandapio

    So the other 3 mil came from Verizon and Sprint?
    Hmmmm???  At&t should be worried.

    • Anonymous

      If the phone launched only in the US? Yes. But it wasn’t. I think Apple said 63% of their revenue comes from abroad.

      • http://twitter.com/KimaDog KimaDog

        If they would open up China, their iPhone sales would double very quickly.  As a stock holder, I don’t understand why Apple did not open up T-Mobile.   Their phone should be everywhere and priced appropriately according to the Gillette paradigm.   But I dropped 399 on the 64 GB, so they can have their cake and eat it too.

  • Anonymous

    A million? That’s it?

  • Juan

    You should less worried about releasing press notes and more worried about shipping my damm iPhone! i was supposed to received it on oppening day and till this date it has not even shipped! F*&* YOU ATT!! i would never be your client if it would not be because my phone is paid by my company.

  • Jgeezy2484

    Disappointment? You are the disappointment.

  • Greg Kaiser

    I’d love a new iPhone since I just got this silly evo 3d and don’t qualify for an upgrade with sprint right now! pick me!

  • RIMFAIL

    Sweet! Wonder how many people said ‘Screw these free BlackBerry apps, time for an iPhone…’

    • Applesucksfatties

      Does anyone really care besides you?      I’m curious if your fellow iBGR posters would like a splash of your Obsession of RIM by DOUCHEFAIL.  

      • RIMFAIL

        I care.. Guess your too busy playing BeJewled on your CuntBerry.

      • Applesucksfatties

        Dude…. you are f*cking pathetic..seriously.  You need to get a hobby or go volunteer in the shitty ghetto you live in.  I’m sure they always need help picking up garbage around the trailer park. …TRAILERTRASHFAIL

  • http://twitter.com/JKingDaRuler Jay Kingsley

    All the hate in the world wont stop the sales of the iPhone 4S. There is no phone that has even come close to the sales numbers of the iPhone brand … So even though opinions differ on what device is better and what OS is better, the numbers speak for themselves …. Congrats Apple. 

  • Anonymous

    iPhone 4S for the win. What an awesome piece of engineering. Oh, and before you Fandroids get on my ass telling me how much more superior the Galaxy S2 or the Nexus is to iPhones, I was merely expressing my views. Android is Awesome, I get it. Kthxbai

blog comments powered by Disqus