Proof That AT&T Needs To Extend That iPhone Deal

During its earnings reports today, AT&T posted numbers that easily beat Wall Street's expectations. Yes, profits were down, but we're in a down economy, and there's simply no denying that things would have been much, much worse without the iPhone. First of all, AT&T announced that it had a net gain of 1.2 million subscribers for the quarter. That's solid, but guess why? It also announced that it had gained 1.6 million new iPhone activations. Some of those were existing customers, but 40 percent of them were new to AT&T. Without the iPhone it seems fairly likely that AT&T may have lost customers for the quarter. It certainly wouldn't have gained the 800,000 new iPhone ones, and given the numbers, you can imagine that a good number of existing customers would have left had they not upgraded to the iPhone.