AT&T adds 780,000 subscribers in Q4

AT&T, like seemingly everyone else, has released its end-year financial results for 2012. The fourth quarter of that year saw Ma Bell adding 780,000 new subscribers to its books. While that number seems a tad modest compared to Verizon’s 2.1 million postpaid additions, it’s still a pretty nice feat AT&T can be proud of.

AT&T sold 10.2 million smartphones last quarter, but Apple’s iPhone accounted for an astounding 8.6 million units. We’d like to believe the other 1.6 million were mostly Android phones, but there was no word on those particular numbers. Of all phones sold to postpaid customers, 89% were smartphones — that’s not a bad statistic to throw into a bullet point list at all.

Jumping into the dollar signs like Scrooge McDuck would into a pile of gold, AT&T is reporting $17.6 billion in wireless revenues for the quarter, but ended up losing $3.9 billion. AT&T says folks shouldn’t worry, though, as those losses are due to a number of different factors. Namely, Hurricane Sandy-related expenses, pension restructuring and more are said to have affected the pockets of HTC, circumstances we imagine aren’t normal.

On the year, AT&T still came out on top as it profited $7.3 billion and added 3.8 million subscribers. More than two-thirds of AT&T’s postpaid smartphone customers are on tiered data plans, a win for the carrier considering how much resistance there is to the eventual death of unlimited data.

AT&T doesn’t have the ability to call itself the number one carrier in terms of postpaid customers, but we’re sure the execs up in those deep Texas offices don’t mind the commanding second place lead they have over the likes of T-Mobile, Sprint and US Cellular. Click on through for the full financial results.