AT&T sells a record number of Android smartphones

AT&T may be the iPhone leader in the U.S., but it's touting record Android smartphone sales for the second quarter of 2013.

The No. 2 carrier in the country highlighted its historic high "second-quarter smartphone sales of 6.8 million, including record Android sales."

AT&T wouldn't get into specifics on just how many Androids were sold, leaving us to rely on last year's data for context.

Insead, the hard numbers included 632,000 total subscribers added in the second quarter, with 398,000 of them being for cellular-based tablets, and $17.3 billion in wireless revenue.

Just how many iPhones were sold?

The iPhone wasn't mentioned in today's earnings report press release nor was any Apple device, but the we can glean some data from the company's conference call.

AT&T said that it sold more iPhones in the last three months ending in June than it did in the same quarter a year ago, according to All Things D.

Looking back at last year's numbers, the carrier sold 3.7 million iPhones in the second quarter of 2012, meaning it sold at least as many or more than that figure in this year's quarter.

Why might AT&T be numbers shy when it comes to its iPhone sales? Verizon announced that it had activated 3.9 million iPhones in the this year's second quarter. If you can't beat 'em, be vague about it.

So record Android smartphone sales get highlighted despite the fact that it's impossible for the Google-powered devices to make up the rest of the 6.8 million smartphones sold.

• Read the details of Apple's revenue for the third quarter