We'll have to wait a little while longer for Verizon to announce its Q4 2011 financial numbers to see just how the carrier did during the past holiday season, but today Verizon Wireless CFO Fran Shammo gave a peek into his company's fourth quarter performance. Speaking at the Citi Global Entertainment, Media & Telecommunications Conference, Shammo revealed that Verizon activated a total of 4.2 million iPhones during Q4, a record for the carrier. That helped Verizon to end 2011 with a total of 10.7 million iPhones sold during the year, just shy of its goal of 11 million iPhones sold in 2011.
The iPhone wasn't the only product family that saw a record number of activations, as Shammo also said that activated 2.2 million LTE devices during the fourth quarter, a number that's quite a bit higher than any previous quarter. No specific device figures were mentioned, but the fact that Verizon launched a trio of high-profile LTE handsets in the HTC Rezound, Motorola DROID RAZR, and Samsung Galaxy Nexus probably played a part in the record number of activations. Shammo did say, however, that Verizon's service margins for Q4 will still take a 5 to 6 percent hit when compared to Q3.
Smartphones, and really just gadgets in general, are increasingly becoming popular gifts to give over the holiday season, so it makes sense that Verizon would see some big sales numbers over the final few months of the year. Still, sales of 4.2 million iPhones and 2.2 million LTE devices are pretty impressive, with the latter figure showing that more and more people are ready to make the jump to a 4G LTE device despite the fact that many carry a higher price tag than 3G-only devices. Getting back to the iPhone, it'll be interesting to compare sales of Apple's handsets on Verizon to the models on AT&T and Sprint when those carriers release their figures and see which flavor iPhone was the most popular over the holidays. How many of you snagged a Verizon iPhone or 4G LTE device during the last few months of 2011?
