AT&T says it activated one million iPhone 4S units as of Tuesday

9to5 Staff | Oct 20 2011 - 6:21 am PT

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPuYWwBDHHQ]
AT&T just issued a press release saying they activated one million iPhone 4S units, or one-quarter of the four million devices Apple sold during the launch weekend. It’s the most successful launch in AT&T’s history, the company wrote in the release:

AT&T today announced it activated more than 1 million iPhone 4S’ as of Tuesday, making it the most successful iPhone launch in the company’s history. AT&T was the first carrier in the world to launch iPhone in 2007 and is the only U.S. carrier to support iPhone 4S with 4G speeds. “It’s no surprise that customers are clamoring for iPhone 4S and they want it to run on a network that lets them download twice as fast as competitors’,” said Ralph de la Vega, President and CEO, AT&T Mobility & Consumer Markets. AT&T’s speed advantage, and the unique ability to talk and surf at the same time, has been roundly praised by industry pundits.

About those “4G speeds”…

AT&T is reportedly pushing Apple to put a “4G” cellular icon on iPhone 4S to represent its faster Internet connection, which theoretically hits 3G HSPA 14.4 Mbps speeds (lawmakers wouldn’t approve of that). The carrier also released a customer testimonial video, included above, with people explaining why they opted for an iPhone 4S on the AT&T network (hint: because it’s “super-fast”).

Taking into account September quarter earnings, iPhone 4S sales in just a few days since last Friday’s launch hit nearly one-third of the 2.7 million iPhones activated in the last quarter which was down from the 3.2 million iPhones from the year ago September 2010 quarter (which included the iPhone 4 launch).

Note that this is one million iPhone 4Ss only, excluding the newly price-reduced iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS units.

Even with Android device sales doubling year over year, all iPhone models accounted for 56 percent of smartphone device sales which topped 4.8 million units for the quarter ended September 30, 2011. Following the iPhone 4S release, AT&T announced pre-orders of 200,000 units in the first twelve hours, calling it “the most successful iPhone launch we’ve ever had”. Apple then confirmed one million iPhone 4S pre-orders in 24 hours, surpassing the previous single day pre-order record of 600,000 held by iPhone 4. Sprint also announced its best sales day ever, thanks to the new iPhone 4S. On Monday, Apple announced launch weekend sales of four million iPhone 4S units, more than double the iPhone 4 launch numbers.