NEW YORK (AP) ― AT&T Inc. is still the home of the iPhone. It activated 7.6 million of them in the latest quarter, accounting for one out of every five iPhones sold globally.

And AT&T remains heavily dependent on the iPhone to gain and keep customers, despite a vow by CEO Randall Stephenson a year ago to “very aggressively” market competing smartphones in 2011. That vow came in the wake AT&T’s loss of an exclusive right to sell the iPhone in the U.S.

The iPhone accounted for about 80 percent of the smartphones AT&T activated in the fourth quarter of 2011, up from 70 percent just before Stephenson made his vow.

The figures are somewhat skewed because the fourth quarter of 2011 saw the launch of a new iPhone model, the iPhone 4S, whereas the fourth quarter of 2010 didn’t.

Looking at annual sales instead, there’s a decline in the iPhone’s percentage of AT&T smartphones ― to 69 percent last year, from 79 percent in 2010.