AT&T's Fourth Quarter Smartphone Sales a Personal Best

AT&T on Tuesday announced that it sold more than 10 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2012, which isn't just a lot of smartphones, it's actually a personal record. Ma Bell's previous high was 9.4 million smartphone sales, which it achieved a year prior in the fourth quarter of 2011.

"We had another incredible quarter of smartphone sales as the mobile Internet continues to drive strong growth in wireless," said Ralph de la Vega, president and chief executive officer for AT&T Mobility. "These are the industry’s most valuable postpaid subscribers with average revenues twice that of non-smartphone subscribers."


AT&T says it sold more than 110,000 smartphones each day, on average, during the record breaking quarter. The company believes its 4G and LTE networks are a large reason why, noting that more than 170 million subscribers have access to high-speed cellular data.

It also helps that AT&T carries a wide selection of devices covering all the major platforms, including iOS (Apple), Android (Google), and Windows Phone 8 (Microsoft).

AT&T plans to release its full fourth-quarter 2012 financial results on Thursday, January 24.