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]