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Verizon Wireless posts Q1 2012 earnings: more subscribers, higher service, data revenues

Categories: Verizon
By: , IntoMobile
Thursday, April 19th, 2012 at 5:05 AM

Verizon Wireless announced its Q1 2012 earnings on Thursday and the carrier’s performance was strong as expected. Total revenues were $18.3 billion, up 8.2 percent year over year. Verizon’s quarterly service revenue jumped 7.7 percent from last year and now sits as $15.4 billion. Retail service revenue also grew 8.9 percent year over year to $14.9 billion.

Data is Verizon’s strong point. Data revenues climbed $1.1 billion to reach $6.6 billion, a whopping 21 percent yearly increase. Data now represents almost half  (42.9 percent) of all Verizon’s service revenue. Retail postpaid data ARPU (average monthly service revenue per user) also increased to $23.80, a 16 percent year over year jump. Retail service ARPU is now $53.66, a 3.4 percent increase from last year.

The carrier added 734,000 retail net customers, excluding acquisitions and adjustments. This figure includes 501,000 retail postpaid net customers. Verizon now has 93 million total retail customers, of which 88 million are retail postpaid. The carrier has a low retail postpaid churn of 0.96 percent and a total retail churn rate of 1.24 percent.

Smartphone penetration also increased to 47 percent, up from 43.5 percent at the end of Q4 2011. More customers are buying smartphones with the category now accounting for 72% of postpaid phone sales. In the quarter, the carrier sold 6.3 million smartphones; one-third (2.1 million) were 4G LTE  and 3.2 million were iPhones.

[Via Verizon Wireless]

About The Author

Kelly Hodgkins

Kelly spent the last four years covering mobile technology at places like BGR, Gizmodo and The Unofficial Apple Weblog. Before writing, she spent a few years working with and teaching others how to use Adobe Flash and Macromedia Director. Even earlier than that, she spent several years as a Ph.D student in Microbiology. When she's not writing, she can be found fishing the lakes and hiking the mountains of Western Maine with her husband and tribe of children. You can follow her on Twitter @kellyhodgkins.

  • Anonymous

    sickening! now you know how they are rolling out lte so fast! Thats ok though. People will eventually realize that you don’t need 30mbps on your smartphone and will switch to something cheaper.  I like my straight talk byod. I’m saving $68 a month over Verizon and I still get consistent speeds from 6-8mbps. Thats $1632 I’m saving over 2 year contract.  I will take my money and give Verizon the middle finger for stealing my money for so long!