14 DAY TRIAL // Mobile phone carrier AT&T has posted some impressive numbers for the third quarter of the ongoing year and has showed that the exclusivity it has on Apple's iPhone device has helped it a lot in this direction, something that the operator seems determined to preserve at least for this quarter by allowing resellers in the United States to offer the handset to users.
The Apple iPhone has been for a long time one of the gold mines AT&T has benefited from, and the carrier has only sold the device through its own website or through the company-owned stores, while also having it available via large national partners like Best Buy and Walmart, yet now it seems that it plans on taking a new approach to the iPhone's availability.
According to a recent post on Engadget, starting with November 1, 2009, certain authorized resellers in the country will have the chance to get a little piece of the iPhone action by having the device available for purchase. “To be specific, the top 20 agents will be invited to start stocking the various iPhone flavors in-store, which might signal AT&T's interest in keeping up the huge iPhone-specific numbers it posted for the third quarter this year,” the news site notes.
Indeed, AT&T has seen a record third quarter when it comes to the iPhone, with 3.2 million iPhone activations during the time frame, 40 percent of which were customers new to the company. In addition, the carrier also announced robust growth in wireless data revenues, including messaging, Internet browsing, application download and more, and it's a known fact that iPhone owners use ten times more data than any average smartphone user.
It would make sense for AT&T to have the iPhone available through more resellers in the country, given these numbers, yet that is only a rumor for the time being, and it remains to be seen whether it will actually pan out or not. However, since November 1 is not too far into the future, we have only a short period of time left before we learn the truth.