Mobile Analyst Watch: Cingular Triples Its Second-Quarter Profit And Adds 1.5 Million To Subscriber Base

This is the blog from John Sun, a tech PR and analyst relations professional in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a long-time consumer of technology, I received my first taste of the mobile industry working on the launch of Hong Kong Telecom's digital GSM network in 1994.

After going through numerous cell phones, gaming devices, PDAs and smartphones, my gadget geek existence has once again converged with my professional life, and this blog covers the analysts commenting on the mobile devices, content and services markets.

Running Devices

mobileanalystwatch [AT] gmail.com

follow me on Twitter

Creative Commons License

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Cingular Triples Its Second-Quarter Profit And Adds 1.5 Million To Subscriber Base

Investor's Business Daily reports that "Cingular Wireless tripled its second-quarter profit to $540 million as customer disconnects fell to an all-time low.

According to the article, Cingular earned $540 million last quarter, up from $147 million in the year-earlier quarter. The carrier added "1.5 million subscribers, raising its customer count to 57.3 million. Verizon Wireless has 53 million customers."

Roger Entner at Ovum said, "Cingular is getting better with network quality, which is helping to lower customer churn."

Cingular claimed "its monthly churn rate fell to 1.7% in the second quarter. That's down from 2.2% a year ago and 2.7% in 2004."

Regarding Cingular claim that "it now has the lowest dropped call rate among national carriers, ahead of Verizon Wireless," Entner stated he believed it "applies mostly to about 20 markets." He added that "Cingular still has issues with blocked calls — calls that don't connect."