Edible Apple

AT&T released their earnings for the first quarter of 2010 and reported EPS of $0.42 on revenue of $30.6 billion. AT&T also stated that they activated 2.7 million iPhones during the quarter, and that more than 1/3 of those iPhone users were new AT&T subscribers. During the last quarter, AT&T recorded 3.1 million iPhone activations, and while that might suggest that iPhone growth on AT&T is slowing, bear in mind that last quarter was a holiday quarter.

Still, Apple was unhampered by a non-holiday quarter, selling an astounding 8.75 million iPhones from January through March. So while iPhone sales here in the US seem to be doing just fine, Apple’s overall sales figures underscores just how fast iPhone growth is exploding overseas.

During yesterdays earnings conference call, Apple COO Tim Cook stressed that impressive iPhone sales were largely the result of Apple adding 8 new carriers in key countries like the UK. So while the AT&T/iPhone relationship may be moving along just fine for now, Apple undoubtedly realizes that they will eventually need to offer the device on another carrier if they want to prevent market saturation here in the US.

A few months ago, there were rumors that Apple would release a CDMA capable iPhone this summer, but more recently, that timeframe has been pushed back to sometime in 2011. And you might recall that Gizmodo’s examination of Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 4G revealed a Micro-Sim slot, which strongly indicates that Apple’s next-gen iPhone will continue to be an AT&T exclusive.