AT&T: Almost 500,000 iPad 3Gs Activated
The question came near the end of AT&T’s second-quarter earnings call today, and apparently was too late for many people to notice — but according to AT&T, it has activated somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 iPad 3G devices, perhaps disproving its own CEO’s contention that most iPad users would stick to Wi-Fi connections.
According to AT&T senior executive vice president and chief financial officer Rick Lindner, Ma Bell was surprised by the amount of interest shown in the iPad by its business customers, especially since big-company CIOs had been reluctant to approve iPhones for corporate purchases when the phone first arrived. Lindner’s findings echoed those found by Apple itself, which talked about enterprise interest during its earnings call earlier this week.
“Right from the beginning, we’ve had a lot of [business] interest” in the iPad said Lindner on the call, adding that between 75 to 80 percent of all iPad 3G service plans were in the higher data-package range, signaling users who planned to use the iPad for a lot of mobile connectivity. Lindner added that AT&T itself was finding the iPad quite useful for document review, with executives using iPads instead of paper copies to review big presentations like today’s Q2 earnings call.
Indeed, the iPad’s ability to allow users to quickly consume content in a highly portable fashion has made believers out of even the staunchest Windows-only customers. While Lindner said that per-user iPad data usage hadn’t yet shown signs of approaching levels used by customers with data-centric devices like laptop modems, he did acknowledge that it was still very early in the iPad’s lifecycle, and as such impossible to predict accurate data download needs. Just another thing to watch for, if you are at all worried about AT&T’s ability to handle more traffic on its 3G network.
