US giant AT&T reported a 15 percent decline in second-quarter profit yesterday as continuing declines in fixed-line voice masked gains at its mobile division. The company reported net income of US$3.2 billion (54 cents a share), down from US$3.77 billion (63 cents a share), in the year-earlier quarter, while revenues fell 0.4 percent to US$30.73 billion. According to a Thomson Reuters poll, analysts had forecast earnings of 51 cents per share on revenue of US$30.67 billion. Wireless revenues in the quarter rose 9.8 percent to US$11.96 billion and data rose 4.2 percent to US$6.3 billion, but fixed-line voice dropped 13.3 percent to US$8.3 billion. The company said it added 1.4 million (net) new mobile subscribers in the quarter to reach 79.6 million, up 6.7 million over the past year. It said that 1.2 million of the new additions were postpaid (contract) customers, which the company claimed was its best-ever second-quarter total and a 29 percent rise over the year earlier period. 

AT&T’s performance in mobile was spearheaded by the iPhone, which it offers exclusively in the US. The firm said it activated over 2.4 million iPhones in the quarter, which coincided with the launch of the iPhone 3GS last month. More than a third of the activations were for customers new to AT&T. The iconic device was also deemed largely responsible for a 37.2 percent increase in mobile data revenues to US$3.4 billion, more than double the total for the second quarter two years earlier. “That shows the massive shift away from voice-centric phones to data-centric integrated devices,” Roger Entner, head of telecom research at Nielson Co, told Dow Jones Newswires. However, AT&T’s operating income margin (OIBDA) fell to 38.3 percent from 41.2 percent in the year-earlier quarter, a factor it attributed to increased acquisition costs associated with the iPhone 3GS launch.