T-Mobile USA loses 77,000 subs while data revenues surge

3G and Android-powered devices couldn't stave off T-Mobile USA's customer defections in the third quarter.

The operator lost 77,000 subscribers mostly from the high-value postpaid segment, and net income was down from $442 million last year to $417 million in the third quarter 2009.

ARPU fell by $1 from the second quarter to the third quarter down to $47, but data services accounted for 21 percent of the total ARPU, at $10 per subscriber, up from 17.3 percent the previous year. T-Mobile's data services revenue reached $1 billion in the third quarter. Total service revenue came in at $4.73 billion, down from $4.77 billion in the second quarter and $4.491 billion in the third quarter last year.

T-Mobile USA CTO Cole Brodman said [1] last week during the Open Mobile Summit 2009 conference in San Francisco that the company believes 2009 is the "year of the smartphone," and expects that 40 percent of its sales in the fourth quarter will be smartphones, the majority of which will be devices with Android and BlackBerry operating systems. In September, T-Mobile USA's Neville Ray said the operator will be deploying HSPA+ services nationwide by 2010 and already has HSPA+ up an running in parts of Philadelphia.

For more:
- see this FierceWireless article
[2]- see FierceWireless' Q3 earnings page [3]
- see this release [4]

Related articles:
T-Mobile CTO: 40% of Q4 sales will be smartphones [1]
AT&T & LTE vs. T-Mobile & HSPA+ [5] = Fight!
T-Mobile aims for nationwide HSPA+ deployment [6] by 2010