Fourth quarter earnings fell 23.6 percent at AT&T (NYSE: T), which posted net income of $2.4 billion, or 41 cents a share, on revenue of $31.1 billion. Last year, the telecoms giant reported earnings of $3.1 billion, or 51 cents per share. It reported adjusted earnings of 64 cents a share, falling just shy of the $0.65 share estimate from a Thomson Reuters poll of analysts. Revenues, which grew 2.4 percent, meeting analyst expectations, were boosted by 13.2 percent growth in its wireless unit and a 14.2 percent increase in wireline IP data revenues. Wireless revenues came in at $12.9 billion, while the wireline business contracted 3.3 percent to $17 billion. Voice revenues, however, were hard hit, as expected, falling 10 percent to $9 billion. The iPhone continued to lure users to its wireless unit, but subsidies of the handset continued to hit EPS. AT&T said $0.07 of the EPS came from its iPhone subsidies, as well as hurricane related expenses and forex impacts. 

Wireless Unit:

—Wireless revenue up: Wireless revenues grew 13.2 percent to $12.9 billion in the fourth quarter.

—Wireless customer additions: AT&T added 2.1 million net wireless subscribers in the fourth quarter, up slightly from 2 million net adds in Q3. This was one bright spot, beating analyst expectations of 1.9 million. It now has a total of 77 million.

—iPhone details: 1.9 million iPhones were activated in the fourth quarter, down from 2.3 million in the third quarter. Approximately 40 percent of iPhone activations were for customers new to AT&T, as it was in Q3. This amounts to around 760,000 new customers coming to AT&T for the iPhone. Again, AT&T touted the iPhone’s to bring in “high-value subscribers with significantly higher ARPU (average monthly revenues per subscriber) and lower churn” than its postpaid subscriber average.

— Wireless ARPU: Wireless postpaid subscriber ARPU was up 3.9 year on year to $59.59, while postpaid data ARPU jumped 35.7 percent to $16.30 from the same period last year, and increased 10.9 percent sequentially.

—Wireless data revenues jumps: Wireless data revenues grew strongly again, surging
51.2 percent from Q4 2007 to $3.1 billion. AT&T said that data revenues had been boosted by rapid customer uptake in smartphones, increased usage of wireless Internet access and messaging. The operator said smartphone “more than doubled over the past year.” Data represented 26.6 percent of its fourth-quarter wireless service revenues, up from 19.9 percent in the year-earlier quarter.

Wireline details after the jump...