Verizon sees increased revenue thanks to influx of tablet users

Record numbers of new tablet users, and the first rise in fixed-line revenue in seven years, drove Verizon Communications’ second-quarter revenue up 5.7 percent year on year, it reported Tuesday. Revenue for the quarter ended June 30 totaled US$31.5 billion, up from $29.8 billion a year earlier. Wireless services continued to contribute the bulk of the company’s revenue and growth, rising 5.9 percent to $18.1 billion, from $17.1 billion a year earlier. The company signed up 1.4 million net new retail postpaid customers, 1.15 million of them tablet users. That takes the company’s total number of retail connections to 104.6 million, 75 percent of them smartphone users.

Verizon’s money machine continues to plow on, but much of its wireless growth this quarter came from tablets, not smartphones — a trend that started last quarter. Big Red added some 1.4 million net retail connections, of whom a whopping 1.15 million used LTE-equipped slates. Most of those additions were likely Verizon customers already, who had taken advantage of the More Everything plan to add a tablet to their existing phone plan for $10. Though those folks technically count as new connections, Verizon only added 304,000 net phone customers, compared to 940,000 this time a year ago. That means that despite selling a million or so smartphone connections, the company dumped about 700,000 — a considerable slowdown compared to T-Mobile. Still, Verizon saw 7.5 percent more wireless revenue ($21.5 billion) and a similar bump in operating profits. On the broadband side, Verizon added 139,000 connections to its high-speed FiOS internet plans, with 100,000 new FiOS video connections. That makes 6.3 million FiOS internet customers total, figures that won’t be hurt by the addition of faster upload speeds. Of course, what a lot of customers want (especially Netflix users) is faster download speeds — Verizon said that it switched 70,000 customers from copper to fiber over the last quarter, which definitely won’t hurt.