AT&T Passes 100 Million Wireless Subscriber Mark as Revenue Falls Flat

Posted 10/20/2011 at 10:47am | by Paul Lilly

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AT&T added 2.1 million wireless subscribers during the company's third fiscal quarter for 2011, enough to get over the hump of 100 million subscribers, the wireless carrier announced today. The company also said that sales of Android and other non-iPhone smartphones were nearly half of 4.8 million smartphone sales for the quarter, which has to be news to Google's ears.

The iPhone is still selling well too, and in fact AT&T said in a separate press release that it sold 1 million iPhone 4S devices as of Tuesday. Nevertheless, revenue fell flat for the quarter, down $103 million, or 0.3 percent, versus one year prior. Profits took a bigger hit and fell from $12.3 billion a year ago to $3.6 billion in Q3 2011. Be that as it may, AT&T viewed the quarter with a positive outlook.

"Mobile broadband growth continues to be robust, execution was strong across the business, and we delivered another solid quarter," said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and chief executive officer. "Smartphones, connected devices and tablets all posted impressive gains. Our first LTE 4G markets are up and running with terrific speeds. And we continue to work toward a successful completion of our planned T-Mobile USA merger. The next waves in the mobile Internet revolution represent tremendous growth potential, and we are laying the groundwork required for that future."

Analysts seem to agree with AT&T's optimism. Todd Rosenbluth, an equity analyst at Standard & Poor's, told CNet that his firm is "pretty happy with this quarter."