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AT&T is largest provider of smart phones

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Bloomberg News

Published: May 16, 2009

AT&T Inc., the second-largest U.S. mobile-phone company, attracted more than twice as many smart-phone users as its nearest competitor as millions of iPhone customers swelled subscriber ranks.

AT&T, the exclusive U.S. provider of Apple Inc.'s iPhone, accounted for 46.9 percent of all smart-phone subscribers at the end of March, according to researcher ComScore Inc.

Verizon Wireless, the biggest mobile-phone carrier since its acquisition of Alltel Corp., came in second with 20 percent of the market.

The iPhone made up 41 percent of AT&Ts 11.8 million smart-phone subscriptions, ComScore said. Dallas-based AT&T is using the popular phone to help drive growth in data revenue, which rose 39 percent last quarter.

IPhone customers spend about 60 percent more every month on subscriptions than the company's other mobile customers and are less likely to switch carriers, AT&T has said.

The United States had 5.3 million iPhone users in March, Reston, Va.-based ComScore said.

About 355,000 of them used T- Mobile's network after swapping out the devices' so-called subscriber identity module, or SIM card, ComScore spokeswoman Jaimee Steele said. The number of T-Mobile users quadrupled from a year earlier.

AT&T would still be the largest U.S. smart-phone provider without the iPhone, weighing in with more than one-third of the market excluding the device, helped by sales of Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry phones.

RIM's products are the most popular smart phones, making up 38 percent of sales among all carriers, followed by Apple and Palm Inc.

Smart phones have Web access and PC-like operating systems that make it easier to use e-mail and the Internet. There were 25.2 million smart-phone users in the United States at the end of March, according to ComScore.

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