Motorola DROID, Apple iPhone led the way for Verizon and AT&T subscriber growth in Q4

The fourth quarter was a good period for customer growth in the U.S. cellular carrier business. 5.9 million new subscribers signed up, the largest growth in three years according to a report by Wireless Intelligence. 4.9 million of those new customers were signed up by Verizon or AT&T. The number 1 and number 2 largest U.S. operators respectively have been carrying on a feud as fierce as the legendary Hatfield-McCoy battle. The battleground is television where Verizon and AT&T have been pounding each other with vicious, but sometimes humorous, ads.

Verizon finished the quarter with 91.2 million subscribers, a gain of 2.2 million from the prior quarter and the most new additions since the third quarter of 2008. The sizzling hot Motorola DROID helped Big Red in the period as the Android flavored phone continued to sell well. For Verizon, it is the first handset that they have offered that could stand next to the iPhone and garner favorable comparisons. Speaking of the iPhone, Apple's iconic touchscreen model helped AT&T score its second largest quarterly increase with 2.7 million new customers added. The operator now has a total of  85.1 million customers (including 863,000 subscribers from the acquisition of Centenniel Wireless), trailing only Verizon.

The report shows a drop of 148,000 customers for third place Sprint during the period. That figure includes a gain of 435,000 pre-paid accounts for its Boost Mobile subsidiary. T-Mobile improved from a loss of 77,000 subscribers in the 2008 period to show a gain of 371,000 in this year's 4th quarter.

Wireless Intelligence analyst Jon Groves noted that the iPhone chalked up its second biggest number of activations with 3.1 million hooked up in the three month period. More than a third of them were new AT&T subscribers.

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source: electronista