Verizon shows strong quarterly earnings

Andre Yoskowitz
25 Jul 2010 0:56

Verizon, the largest wireless carrier in the United States, reported earnings on Thursday and showed that they added more contract customers in the quarter than rival AT&T did, despite AT&T's exclusive rights to the latest iPhone.

For the quarter, Verizon added a net 665,000 contract customers, thanks mainly to a steady rollout of strong selling Android devices.

AT&T reported a net addition of 496,000 contract customers, even with the launch of the iPhone 4.
Those numbers, which follow a trend, have led many to believe that Apple has almost fully saturated the market for the iPhone with AT&T, with most new buyers being users upgrading from past iPhones.

"We still see a lot of upside here now that we're in a much better position from a device line-up perspective," added Verizon CFO John Killian.

In the smartphone and "messaging device" market, however, AT&T hold a significant lead, with 53 of its contract subscribers owning such devices. Verizon only has 35 percent for that key stat.

Verizon has a total of 92.1 million subscribers, including contract, prepaid and wholesale.