Verizon’s Q3 2014 numbers are out. And they aren’t really much of a surprise. Although it feels like I’ve been saying that each quarter for the past two or more years. Usually Verizon brings in a ton of cash each quarter and adds a ton of customers. Now with smartphones beginning to plateau, carriers like Verizon have begun relying on tablets to bring them more connections, instead of customers. As customers now will have more than one device on the carrier. Out of all the connections added this past quarter about 72% were tablets.
In the third quarter, Verizon added about 1.525 million net retail connections. This brings them to 106 million connections overall. Compared to 101 million this time last year, that’s a 5.2% increase year over year. Altogether, Verizon brought in 2.3 million LTE postpaid additions last quarter. That’s 1.2 million smartphones and 1.1 million tablets.
So what about the cash? Well Verizon said that total revenues for Verizon Wireless were $21.8 billion for the quarter. That’s a 7% increase year over year. Wireless service revenue came in at about $18.4 billion, and that is also a 4.8% increase year over year. Verizon doesn’t report ARPU, instead it’s Average Revenue Per Account or ARPA. And for this quarter, the ARPA hit $161.24 per month. That’s a 3.5% increase year over year. That’s definitely a number that other carriers wish they had.
In the third quarter, Verizon activated 8.9 million smartphones. That’s up from 8.3 million in the second quarter, and 7.6 million in third quarter of 2013. Verizon is reporting a smartphone penetration rate of 77%, that’s up 67% from a year ago. Also, about 7.2% of their postpaid subscriber base upgraded in the past quarter, and of that percentage, 90% were to smartphones. Which is roughly the same from the second quarter.
So Verizon is still number one. There was some talk about AT&T overtaking them. But until we hear numbers from AT&T – which should be soon – Verizon is still number one with 106 million connections. Not bad Verizon.