Verizon Wireless saw a slowdown in their postpaid subscriber growth in the first quarter and for the first time broke out the number of other connections--such as ereaders, machine-to-machine and telematics.
Verizon said it added 1.6 million new net subscribers in the first quarter, adding just 423,000 retail postpaid customers and 1.3 million reseller customers. For the first time, Verizon revealed that it has 7.3 million "other" wireless connections, but did not indicate how many were added in the first quarter.
Verizon CFO John Killian, during a conference call with analysts, said the postpaid business still generates around 85 percent of revenue for for the wireless business. He indicated Verizon will focus on squeezing out as much revenue as it can from existing customers. About 30 percent of customers use smartphones or multimedia phones that require a data plan, Killian said.
Data revenue was up 26.4 percent to $4.5 billion, and exceeded 33 percent of Verizon's service revenue. This is an increase from 27.9 percent in the first quarter of 2009. In the quarter, 30 percent of retail postpaid subscribers had 3G devices, 17 percent had smartphones and 13 percent had multimedia devices.
Verizon Wireless total revenue was $15.8 billion, up 4.4 percent year over year.
For more:
- see this FierceWireless article
- see this press release
- see Verizon's wireless stats
- see the FierceWireless Q1 earnings page
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