Data now 36 percent of Verizon Wireless service revenues

Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ) reported third quarter revenues of $26.5 billion, down 2.9 percent year-over-year but beating analyst estimates of $26.3 billion. The company's Verizon Wireless unit increased revenues 6.0 percent year-over-year to $16.3 billion, adding 584,000 retail postpaid and 447,000 total retail customers--the operator now serves 93.2 million customers and 101.1 million total connections (e.g., telematics and machine-to-machine). Retail postpaid churn in Q3 clocked in at 1.07 percent.

Verizon Wireless retail data revenues increased 22.8 percent in the third quarter to $4.8 billion--retail data ARPU jumped to $18.61, up 19.0 percent year over year. Data revenues now represent 35.7 percent of all VZW service revenues, up from 30.5 percent in the year-ago quarter, an increase analysts credit to the operator's expanding smartphone portfolio. "Verizon has been doing exceedingly well with its Android launch," Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Craig Moffett tells Bloomberg. "They've had a pretty steady diet of sexy new phones, and they've really closed the gap versus the iPhone."

Verizon Wireless subscribers sent or received more than 183 billion text messages during the third quarter. In addition, customers sent close to 3.8 billion photo messages and completed nearly 22 million music and video downloads.

For more on Verizon Wireless' Q3 2010 results:
- read this release
- also check out this FierceWireless Q3 earnings page

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