Verizon released its earnings report for the first quarter of 2012 today, and it contained some interesting information about some of the products the company has on offer. Overall, the news was quite good. The company’s overall revenue was $28 billion, up nearly 5% from the same quarter last year. Much of that was generated by the company’s wireless arm, which drew $18.3 billion in revenue.
One particularly interesting detail dealt with exactly how Verizon Wireless made its money: it seems that just over half of the company’s smartphone sales were iPhones, rather than Android devices. What’s interesting about that is that Android has held the majority of the smartphone market for some time now, due to the multitude of Android-based smartphones on the market. While the iPhone has consistently held a large chunk of the market all by itself, it has not been able to top the market share advantage enjoyed by the dozens of Android phones available. The fact that the iPhone has taken the top spot in Verizon’s smartphone sales could bode ill for Android. Especially since, as Business Insider points out, the iPhone already enjoys the same position with AT&T, and will likely do the same with Sprint sooner rather than later.
Also during the earnings call this morning, Verizon announced that they will soon be rolling out shared family data plans. While the details of the plan are unclear, it is due to come out some time in mid-summer:
Verizon CFO says data-sharing plan will come out mid-summer this year.
The full earnings report can be read here.