AT&T reports initial iPhone subscriber numbers
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Blog: AT&#38;T said it signed up 146,000 iPhone subscribers in the first two days of selling the iPhone, but the true promise of the iPhone won't likely kick in until next year.
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CUPERTINO, Calif. -- AT&T Inc. and Apple Inc. on Tuesday said wireless service for the iPhone will range from $59.99 per month to $99.99 per month.
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Investor's Business Daily - All those long lines of first-day Apple iPhone buyers didn&#39;t immediately pay off as expected for the device&#39;s service provider, AT&amp;T, but the company on Tuesday still reported better-than-expected earnings, aided by strong wireless growth.
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AT&amp;T Inc. and Apple Inc. on Tuesday said wireless service for the iPhone will range from $59.99 per month to $99.99 per month.
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AT&T says it activated only 146,000 iPhones in the first two days the device was for sale.
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(InfoWorld) - After standing in line for hours on Friday to buy the new Apple iPhone, some users were forced to wait even longer to activate the phones, while others found the store shelves empty and will have to wait another week for their phones to arrive in the mail. On Monday, staff at an AT&T store in Boston said they had run out of iPhones on Friday night while a line of customers still snaked out the door. People at the back of the line purchased their phones through "direct fulfillment" and will receive their phones through the mail in three to seven days, the store said. AT&T declined to release sales figures but said that virtually all of its stores have sold out of iPhones. Over the weekend, AT&T referred disappointed customers to the Apple Web site but now says it plans to begin selling iPhones through its online store as well, said AT&T spokesman Michael Coe. He did not give a date. AT&T downplayed the reported activation delays. "The vast majority of iPhone customers have completed the activation process in just a few minutes as planned," Coe said. "Only a very small number of customers who purchased an iPhone this weekend are experiencing issues with activation, and all our energies are focused on clearing up these difficulties just as quickly as possible." Apple did not return calls for comment. Some analysts blamed the delays on heavy user traffic. "AT&T's servers were slow due to the mass number of sign-ups in the first few hours with credit checks. This may have delayed some purchasing of iPhones," said Shaw Wu, an analyst at American Technology Research, in his Monday report to investors. Other customers experienced delays when they tried to switch to AT&T from other carriers, he said. Still, Wu upgraded his stock estimate for the company and predicted that the iPhone would become the fastest-selling product in Apple's history. Within three years, Apple could become one of the top smartphone vendors, changing the competitive landscape of that industry. Even customers who took their iPhones home on Friday faced potential delays in activating them. Users who registered their phones on the iTunes Web site saw a warning that the process could take between 24 and 48 hours, said Craig Henry, a 32-year-old IT administrator at a law firm in Massachusetts. Henry's wait lasted for three hours when he received an e-mail confirmation that his phone was activated. However, he soon faced another challenge when he tried to transfer his address book to the iPhone. "The hardest part for me was transferring my phone numbers because I was on Verizon and didn't have the software to keep the numbers on my PC. So I spent an hour typing in about 150 numbers," he said. He also had to get accustomed to the touchscreen interface, which relies completely on finger drags, flicks, and pinches instead of using hard keys. "It takes a little bit of getting used to. But the typing works fine; I was sending text messages all day on Saturday," Henry said. "When you're in the contacts sheet, you run your finger across the screen -- kind of like flicking a marble -- and it scrolls really fast, or you can drag it and scroll slowly." Many users were concerned about iPhone battery life, an issue that Apple tried to address on June 18 by upgrading the original battery before the product even launched. Still, Henry visited an Apple store on Saturday to buy a second charger so that he could power his iPhone both in his home and his office. Despite the hurdles of learning to use his new gadget, Henry said he suffered no buyer's remorse. "I was out on Saturday night, and everybody knew I had it and wanted to touch it," Henry said. "They made a little fun of me for waiting in line so long, but I don't think the wait was too bad. When people see it, they're amazed by it."
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(InfoWorld) - The iPhone won't be just for customers living in the big cities. On the day it is introducing the hugely hyped cell phone, AT&T announced it will acquire wireless provider Dobson Communications for $2.8 billion in cash. Dobson, which markets its service under the Cellular One brand, provides cellular services mainly to rural and suburban areas. Its network covers 17 states and has the potential to serve 13 million people. Along with the network, AT&T will get Dobson's 1.7 million customers. The companies say their networks overlap only minimally. The two carriers have had a relationship since 1990, when Dobson began offering roaming services to AT&T. The boards of both companies have approved the deal, and Dobson's majority stockholder has also approved it. AT&T said the deal will help it realize significant annual savings in reduced roaming expenses. The deal is subject to regulatory approval. Because there is little network overlap, AT&T expects to obtain approval by the end of this year. AT&T is only just digesting its acquisition of Cingular Wireless, one of the biggest operators in the nation. Adding Dobson's customers to its ranks of subscribers, AT&T will have 63.9 million subscribers.
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Some smartphone AT&T subscribers have been experiencing difficulty accessing the company's 3G and EDGE data services since 6:30 a.m. EST.
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Both Apple and AT&T acknowledged that some customers have had problems activating their phones to connect to the AT&T cellular network.
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Top U.S. phone company AT&T Inc  posted a 41.5 percent rise in quarterly net profit on Tuesday, as Apple Inc's  iPhone helped boost wireless subscriber growth above market expectations.
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Apple and AT&T are demanding customers reveal SSNs to activate their iPhones. That should be the lead of every technology and business article written this week. Check out this and other original content from CNET's blog network.
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Although Apple won't announce its quarterly earnings that will include the first two days of iPhone sales until Wednesday, AT&T said Tuesday that it had activated 146,000 iPhones on the 29th and 30th of June, far below analyst expectations.
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NEW YORK - AT&amp;T and Apple on Tuesday said wireless service for the iPhone will range from $59.99 per month to $99.99 per month. The $59.99 monthly plan includes 450 minutes of voice time; a $79.99 plan includes 900 minutes; and a $99.99 plan includes 1,350 minutes.
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Millions being unlocked - or gathering dust at Carphone Warehouse Analysts looking at both Apple's results and those posted by AT&amp;T - Apple's iPhone partner in the US - have noticed a large discrepancy in the figures.â¦
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Brace yourself for a $2,000 phone bill AT&amp;T and Apple have announced what the iPhone will cost customers over the two-year contract they'll be obliged to sign - and it's pretty-much what AT&amp;T charges customers already.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Apple and AT&T on Tuesday released details of the service plans forÂ the iPhone,Â which will be released later this week. The iPhone will have three available plans that will start at $59.99. Individual plans are priced at $59.99 for 450 minutes, $79.99 for 900 minutes and $99.99 for 1,350 minutes. iPhone customers can also choose from any of AT&TÂ¹s standard service plans, according to AT&T. All three iPhone plans include unlimited data, Visual Voice mail, 200 SMS text messages, roll-over minutes, and unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling. The companies also offered details for the activation of the iPhone. As expected, the activation process will be handled through AppleÂ¹s iTunes application â¹ the process, according to Apple will only take a few minutes as iTunes guides users to choose a service plan, authorize a credit and activate the iPhone. iPhone activation requires an Internet connection; an iTunes Store account or a major credit card; a valid Social Security number (as required by AT&T); the latest version of iTunes and a PC or Mac with a USB 2.0 port and one of the following operating systems: Mac OS X v10.4.10 or later; Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later; or Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Enterprise or Ultimate Edition. The iPhone requires a new two-year AT&T service plan. Customers with existing AT&T accounts will have the option of keeping their existing phone number and upgrading their account to work with iPhone. The iPhone will go on sale on Friday, June 29, 2007 and will cost $499 for the 4GB model and $599 for the 8GB model.
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(InfoWorld) - Apple'sÂ iPhone launchÂ has been marred by delays in AT&T's phone activation system, leaving some people unable to use their new toy throughout the weekend. People who buy the iPhone, which went on sale in the U.S. Friday evening, are required to activate it through Apple's iTunes software on their home computer. They choose a rate plan, authorize their credit card number, and the phone should be activated soon after. Apple has said the process should take only a few minutes for people being assigned a new phone number, and "up to six hours" for people transferring a number from another operator. But for some the wait has been much longer, according to postings on Apple's iPhone message board and elsewhere. "It has now been 48 hours and my iPhone is still the prettiest paperweight I own," wrote one frustrated user. "Nightmare indeed," said another. "I've been waiting 11+ hours now. I got the phone after a somewhat reasonable one-hour wait at the Albany, NY store, then spent 4+ hours talking to AT&T and Apple trying to get the thing activated." Others said their phone was activated in a matter of minutes. AT&T was not available to comment in Europe on Monday morning, and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An AT&T spokesman told the Wall Street Journal newspaper that most activations were occurring in a few minutes, and that the operator was working to fix the remaining issues. An unnamed source told the paper that about 2 percent of users were being affected. The delays cast a shadow over what appears -- so far -- to have been an otherwise successful launch of the iPhone. The device sells for $500 or $600 depending on the amount of memory on board, plus an activation fee and the cost of the service plan from AT&T, which for now has exclusive distribution rights for the iPhone in the U.S. When people buy a new cell phone the device is usually activated in the shop where they buy it. Apple and AT&T had billed the self-activation process as "another example of how AT&T and Apple have partnered to bring innovative new features to our customers." Opinions were divided as to where to lay blame. An iPhone buyer who claimed to work for AT&T said in a message posting that delays were inevitable and not the fault of either company. Thousands were trying to activate their new phone simultaneously over the weekend, the person noted, and the activation requests were lining up at AT&T's network switches "like 30,000 or so people throwing basketballs at one hoop and hoping to make it in." Others said AT&T should have lined up additional capacity for the activations. Some said they expected the problems to be ironed out by next week and the incident to be forgotten. "Activation is going to happen eventually. Why did you invest so much of your time and energy in this?" one person wrote on Apple's board. "Life is too short to worry about this type of thing." There were some other gripes about the iPhone, although it was hard to tell how widespread issues are. Several users complained that the phone's iPod function stopped playing music when they used it as the same time as the Safari Web browser or Google Maps. Others complained of a bug that caused the e-mails they sent via GMail to appear in their inbox. Other users, including a person who responded to a posting on the iPhoneFAQ.org Web, said they were unable to transfer an AT&T business account to their iPhone, and were told they would have to start a new, individual account.