As we were saying, thanks to the Apple iPhone, the mobile Internet is now real. It's here to stay. And from now on everyone will have to copy, er, emulate Apple's achievement. AT&T's quarterly results this morning confirmed our iPhone intuition:
AT&T said it gained the most new customers of any U.S. wireless company ever in a single quarter, ending the period with 70.1 million mobile-phone users. Customer turnover, or churn, narrowed to 1.7 percent from 1.8 percent a year ago.
And so, as you might expect:
Wireless data revenue - money paid to browse the Internet and sending emails via cellphones - surged 58%. Average revenue per user, a closely followed measurement in the telecom industry, climbed 1.9% to $50.28.
Until now, mobile devices could not really capture the power of the full-fledged Internet. As we will report in a paper next week, this new mobile Internet will have a large impact on Net traffic and usage patterns.