AT&T’s Q1 By The Numbers: $31.8 Billion In Revenue, 5.5 Million Smartphones Sold

We’re in the thick of earnings season now, and earlier today telecom titan AT&T jumped into the fray with their Q1 2012 financials. AT&T posted a profit of $0.60 per share on revenues of $31.8 billion — a 1.8% leap year over year — beating analyst expectations. Of that $31.8 billion total, AT&T reports that over half ($16.1 billion, specifically) was generated by their wireless business.

The nation’s second largest wireless carrier also posted a net gain of 726,000 subscribers in Q1 — a staggering drop from the record-setting 2.8 million subs that inked deals with AT&T last quarter, though those numbers are skewed a bit because of the big holiday buying push. Meanwhile, rival Verizon managed to pull ahead this quarter by reported a net gain of 734,000 subs.

AT&T also sold 5.5 million smartphones during the quarter — a new first quarter record for the carrier — and activated 4.3 million iPhones. While I’m sure AT&T is pleased with their strong smartphone sales, the benefit of moving all those devices extends beyond just new records and increased wireless data revenue (which increased nearly 20% year-over-year to $6.1 billion).

What AT&T is really excited about is that their rate of wireless churn (how many people end their service with the company) has slowed a bit — AT&T is sitting at 1.1%, their lowest in a full seven quarters. The company pegs much of this on their strong performance with smartphones, as they note that the churn rate among their smartphone customers is significantly lower than for other contracted customers.

Oh, and AT&T’s wireline business? Things were a little less impressive, as the company reported total wireline revenues of $14.9 billion, down .08% year-over-year. Voice revenues were down, but that was countered by growth in the business and consumer services areas — in addition to reporting solid growth in their business data revenues, AT&T managed to grow their U-Verse subscriber base by 200,000 TV customers and 103,000 wireline broadband connections.