AT&T says half a million iPads use its network
* AT&T CEO cites record sales of smartphones in Q3 — * Does not see international M&A opportunities — * AT&T shares up 0.6 percent on NYSE (Adds analyst quote, updates share price) — About a half a million iPad owners use AT&T Inc's …
Context & Ripple Effects
The half-million figure is a milestone in a story AT&T has been building all year: April's earnings report credited iPhone activations and connected devices like e-readers and GPS units with driving growth, and March saw CEO Randall Stephenson publicly framing the iPhone and iPad as central to the company's strategy. What is new here is scale — the iPad has graduated from launch curiosity to a countable revenue line on AT&T's network.
The disclosure also lands amid persistent questions about what happens when AT&T's iPhone arrangement ends, which is why MarketWatch's syndicated version ran under the headline 'AT&T chief not worried about losing iPhone.' Pairing the record Q3 smartphone sales with the iPad number reads as a deliberate answer: even if exclusivity economics shift, AT&T is positioning itself as the carrier of Apple devices generally, not of one device.
First-order effects
- AT&T now has roughly 500,000 paying iPad data customers on top of its smartphone base, giving it a second device-driven revenue stream just as record Q3 smartphone sales cushion any exclusivity anxiety.
- Stephenson's statement that AT&T sees no international M&A opportunities signals capital stays focused on domestic network capacity — the resource these half million tablets are drawing on, after the June iPad security breach already strained confidence in how AT&T handles that traffic.
Second-order effects
- Rival US carriers face pressure to prove their own tablet connectivity numbers, turning device attach counts into a competitive metric alongside subscriber additions.
- Apple gains negotiating leverage: with two high-volume device categories on AT&T's network, the value of any single-carrier arrangement weakens, and competitors can bid for iPad-style distribution deals of their own.
Third-order effects
- If connected-device growth keeps compounding, carrier valuations shift from voice-subscriber counts to data-attach breadth, making tablets and embedded radios a structural pillar of telecom growth rather than an accessory business.
- The exclusivity model itself erodes as devices multiply: once a manufacturer ships half a million units of one non-phone product on one carrier, multi-carrier distribution becomes the default rather than the prize.
The trend: US carriers are pivoting their growth story from exclusive smartphones to broad connected-device portfolios, with tablet attach rates becoming the next battleground.