“Verizon managed a rare feat in the third quarter: juggling a spike in iPhone sales with double-digit earnings growth,” Roger Cheng reports for CNET. “The two rarely go hand in hand, as the more iPhones a carrier sells, the higher the subsidy it has to pay to Apple (without that subsidy, your iPhone 5 would cost a minimum of $650), and the larger the hit it takes to its bottom line.”
“Through a combination of cost cuts and an effort to squeeze as much profit out of the rest of the business, Verizon managed to avoid that fate,” Cheng reports. “Today, it posted a third-quarter profit of $1.59 billion, or 56 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $3.54 billion, or 49 cents a share. Excluding one-time costs, the company earned 64 cents a share. Revenue, meanwhile, rose 3.9 percent to $29 billion.”
Cheng reports, “Growth was likely driven by the iPhone 5, which launched toward the end of the quarter… Verizon sold 6.8 million smartphones in the period, and they made up 53 percent of its base, although it didn’t provide any details on iPhone or Android sales figures. It added that 4.5 million devices sold in the period were running on its 4G LTE network.”
Read more in the full article here.
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Verizon sold 3.1 million iPhones in Q312, including 650K iPhone 5 units – October 18, 2012