Verizon Wireless reported 1.4 million total net customer additions for the second quarter, including 665,000 retail postpaid net customer additions.
After divestitures and conforming adjustments related to the Alltel acquisition, Verizon Wireless ended the quarter with 92.1 million total customers. Retail postpaid churn was 0.94 percent.
In comparison, AT&T reported postpaid churn of 1.1 percent and added 1.6 million new subscribers, with total subscribers reaching 90.1 million.
During the second quarter, Verizon Wireless customers sent or received more than 180 billion text messages. Customers also sent nearly 4.2 billion picture/video messages and completed more than 25 million music and video downloads.
Retail service ARPU for wireless grew 0.9 percent over the second quarter of 2009 to $51.56. Retail data ARPU increased to $17.85, up 19.4 percent year over year.
In a conference call with analysts, John Townsend, Verizon’s vice president and CFO, said that Verizon does not expect any major supply issues with the Motorola Droid X.
He was asked whether lower subsidies on the Droid phones was the reason the company doesn’t see slipping margins as the carrier adds more smartphones. “If you look at our machine in terms of what we’ve built over time, we have the ability to manage that and absorb and still drive good margins. If we had one quarter where we had 3 million Droid net adds, we’d see a little bit of an impact, but I’d take that impact, because of what it will ultimately do for shareholder value,” Townsend said, according to a webcast on the company’s website.
Shares in Verizon, Verizon Wireless’ co-parent with Vodafone, were up 5 percent in early morning trading to just over $28 from its close yesterday of $27 per share.
Filed Under: Carriers
