NEW YORK — Hidden in AT&T’s financial statements is a story that runs counter to its optimistic profit projections: The company is making less and less from each new smartphone subscriber.
Calculations by The Associated Press, based on AT&T’s public statements, indicate that the average monthly bill for its smartphone subscribers has fallen from $88 to $80 in the space of a year.
That number should be of great concern to Dallas-based AT&T because like most big phone companies, it is struggling with a slowdown in new subscribers. Nearly all adults —and many kids— in the U.S. already have cellphones. AT&T’s executives have been touting smartphones as the solution, since the devices require consumers to pay for data use in addition to voice calls. Smartphone subscribers, therefore, pay more. So moving customers from regular phones to smartphones will keep boosting revenue, AT&T has said.
But an analysis of AT&T’s own figures indicates that smartphone bills have shrunk by 9 percent over a year, challenging the company’s picture of long-term revenue growth.
AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said the company could not comment beyond the figures it has reported publicly.
