The number of people signing up for AT&T service for the first time has plummeted.
While the carrier has managed to hold steady after its iPhone exclusivity contract ended, it has been having a terribly difficult time drawing in new subscribers.
In an earnings report yesterday, AT&T said 62,000 new subscribers signed up for service in the previous quarter. But get this – last year at the same time, that number was 512,000, and during the height of the iPhone craze it managed to pull in new customers by the millions in numerous quarters.
AT&T doesn’t seem to losing droves of its existing customers, so those millions of people who signed up for an iPhone in the last several years aren’t immediately jumping to Verizon.
The company is also weathering the storm by aggressively going after other platforms like Blackberry and Windows Phone, where other carriers don’t have as strong a presence.
AT&T is also basking in Amazon’s Kindle glory, since Amazon pays buckets of cash to the mobile provider to power all of the 3G Kindle devices’ Internet capabilities.
The company’s stock price fell after yesterday’s report to $30.16, but that’s not as bad as it could be. Over the past three years the highest it’s been is $31.
