The bigger growth opportunity in the U.S. mobile market is mobile data services and connected devices, not prepaid, said AT&T Mobility (NYSE:T) CEO Ralph de la Vega during an investor conference.
Despite the fact that prepaid is becoming a growth business while postpaid subscriber growth has flattened, de la Vega indicated that the focus on the metric of subscriber growth is misleading. "I see a lot of people making a lot of noise about subscribers, but that's not where revenue growth is," he said. AT&T added 1.9 million net subscriber additions in the quarter, of which only 512,000 were postpaid subscribers. However, the carrier added 1.1. million "connected" devices to its network during the quarter, such as ereaders and other products. It's unclear
"We've positioned ourselves well for the next wave of growth with emerging devices," he said.
For more:
- see this WSJ live blog (sub. req.)
- see this Dow Jones Newswires article (sub. req.)
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