AT&T's wireless division reported a net gain of 1.6 million customers during the quarter, including smartphone and e-reader customers. AT&T now has 90.1 million wireless customers, the company said in a press release.
The company earned $30.8 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 0.6 percent from a year earlier. Wireless revenue rose from just under $12 billion in the second quarter of 2009 to $13.2 billion in the second quarter of this year.
The company reported 3.2 million iPhone activations during the quarter, a quarterly high for iPhone activations at AT&T, with 27 percent of the activations from customers new to the telecom provider. AT&T has an exclusive agreement in the U.S. with iPhone maker Apple, which released its new iPhone 4 on June 24, days before the end of AT&T's second quarter.
"We again delivered a very strong set of financial results," said Rick Lindner, AT&T's senior executive vice president and CFO. "We've got terrific momentum in wireless."
AT&T also chopped operating expenses by nearly 2 percent, compared to the second quarter of 2009.
Earnings per share for the quarter was $0.68, significantly higher than analyst expectations of $0.57, as polled by Thomson Reuters. Not including a one-time gain for a stock deal, earnings per share was $0.61.
"These results add to our confidence going into the second half of the year," Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO, said in a statement. "We continue to see positive signs of growth in almost every customer segment of our business, especially wireless, which speaks to the quality of our execution and our leadership in the industry's most powerful growth driver -- mobile broadband."
AT&T's wireless data revenue, including messaging and Internet access, increased by $936 million, more than 27 percent, from a year earlier, the company said. Wireless data revenue was $4.4 billion this past quarter.
AT&T's mobile services carried 154 billion text messages during the quarter, up nearly 42 percent from the second quarter of 2009.
AT&T also reported a 1.1 percent increase in wireline consumer revenue, the second consecutive quarter of growth. AT&T added 209,000 U-verse television customers during the quarter, with customers now totalling 2.5 million. The company's Internet Protocol revenue, including U-verse TV, broadband and voice, now represents 40.4 percent of consumer wireline revenue, up from 30.6 percent in the second quarter of 2009.
