AT&T reports Q4 wireless operating income up 54%; smartphones were 93% of postpaid phone sales

AT&T reported its fourth quarter earnings on Tuesday. For the period, AT&T's wireless business saw it's overall revenues rise 4.5% to $18.44 billion, which included a 16% gain in data revenue and a 4.8% gain in service revenue. Operating income came in at $1.4 billion for wireless, up 54% year-over-year. For the 20th straight quarter, ARPU rose with a 3.9% gain. Postpaid ARPU was up 2.1%

During the three months ended in December, the nation's second largest carrier report a net addition of 566,000 postpaid  accounts. The Carrier added more than half a million net new smartphone accounts in the quarter, both postpaid and prepaid. AT&T also added 440,000 net branded tablet additions in the three month period. Overall, the mobile operator has 110.36 million customers, 72.6 million of whom are on a postpaid plan. Churn was 1.11%, a record low for a fourth quarter, but still higher than the churn in some of the other quarters in 2013.

AT&T's early upgrade program, Next, was responsible for the sale of 1 million smartphones in Q4. That represented 15% of all smartphone additions and upgrades in the quarter. 77% of the AT&T's postpaid subscribers are now using a smartphone, up 10% year-over-year. Mobile Share now has 21 million subscribers, accounting for 29% of total postpaid subscribers.



source: AT&T (1), (2)