AT&T Q4 2011: Massive $6.68 Billion Loss On T-Mobile Deal Collapse, iPhone Subsidies, Pension Adjust

[Amerigo Vespucci]

AT&T Q4 2011: Massive $6.68 Billion Loss On T-Mobile Deal Collapse, iPhone Subsidies, Pension Adjustments



By PETER SVENSSON 01/26/12 10:36 AM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/att-q4-2011_n_1233533.html

NEW YORK -- AT&T Inc. is still the home of the iPhone. It activated 7.6 million of them in the latest quarter, accounting for one out of every five iPhones sold globally.

And AT&T remains heavily dependent on the iPhone to gain and keep customers, despite a vow by CEO Randall Stephenson a year ago to "very aggressively" market competing smartphones in 2011. That vow came in the wake AT&T's loss of an exclusive right to sell the iPhone in the U.S.

The iPhone accounted for about 80 percent of the smartphones AT&T activated in the fourth quarter of 2011, up from 70 percent just before Stephenson made his vow.

The figures are somewhat skewed because the fourth quarter of 2011 saw the launch of a new iPhone model, the iPhone 4S, whereas the fourth quarter of 2010 didn't. Looking at annual sales instead, there's a decline in the iPhone's percentage of AT&T smartphones – to 69 percent last year, from 79 percent in 2010.

[onehandle]

1. Just another reason why Apple would not bend to demands of telecoms to put their logos on iPhones...

...and fill them with crapware, like 'open' Android allows.

Telecoms are wildly unstable. They don't make products, they control our access to communication and information.

They should be nationalized.

[stockholmer]

2. "They should be nationalized." Now your talking! But the US Fed needs this treatment first.

Then your horrid, for-profit health care system.

[SharonAnn]

3. They were regulated at one time. After they were split up, they were deregulated for the most part.

Then, they started consolidating and now they're a monopoly again, but without regulation that would protect the public.

How's that deregulation stuff working out for us? Not so well.

[cstanleytech]

4. And thats why we need regulation but sadly to many of our policitians are willing to accept bribes

(labeled as campaign donations of course) from those corporations as well as some of the people running the FCC are if not legally corrupt atleast ethically corrupt like Meredith Attwell Baker is for supporting approval of the comcast buyout of NBC and then after approving the deal quitting immediately and going to work for Comcast.

[onehandle]

5. Banks. Energy. Healthcare. Pharma. Communications.

Nationalize them all.

[avaistheone1]

7. Love my Android, and love its apps.

AND it outperforms my coworkers' iphones on just about everything.

[Doc Holliday]

6. You know, of course, that

what you're advocating is....say it softly, so as not to frighten the neighbors....


....socialism.