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AT&T’s Honeymoon with the iPhone to End?

Posted on 23. Oct, 2009 by admin in Computers, Phones

AT&T's breaking up with the iPhone? That seems to be the implication from a conference call with AT&T Mobility's CEO Ralph de la Vega. ComputerWorld is reporting that de la Vega downplayed the importance of the iPhone to AT&T’s overall smartphone strategy, and suggested that life for the mobile carrier would be just fine once the exclusive deal with Apple came to an end.

"We have a legacy of having a great portfolio...that will continue after the iPhone is no longer exclusive to us,” ComputerWorld quotes de la Vega as saying, adding “we feel really good about our non-iPhone [subscriber] adds and net adds.... We feel really strong about our portfolio in quick messaging devices, including BlackBerry and all the smartphones.” AT&T’s hold on the iPhone is expected to end mid-2010.

The possible sigh of relief coming from de la Vega may be due to the headaches the iPhone brought along with it. Broadband hungry iPhone users have overwhelmed AT&T’s network, bringing it at times to crawl. While the all those new subscribers are a good thing--3.2 million new iPhone activations in the 3rd quarter of 2009--the impact they are having isn’t. Time to let others, like Verizon, share in the pain.

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Tags: apple, att, conference-call, consumer-electronics, downplayed-the, exclusive, good-thing-3-2, headaches, image-credit, implication, mobile-carrier, news, Phones, the-implication, with-the-iphone