American Tower said that third-quarter revenue increased 28% to $1.0 billion, and operating profit rose 26% to $666 million. The company ended the quarter with 69,519 total towers, only 28,394 of which are in the United States.
American Tower has been building and buying towers throughout Latin America, and said today that almost all of its international assets are in markets that are “three to 10 years behind the U.S.” in mobile broadband deployment.
American Tower’s domestic site rental and management revenue in Q3 was $664 million, while international site rental and management revenue was $348 million. Capital expenditures for the quarter were $257 million.
The global smartphone market is becoming more competitive, with second- and third-tier vendors now controlling 63% of the market, according to Strategy Analytics. The firm siad that during the third quarter of this year, Samsung had 24.7% of the market and Apple had 12.3%. A year ago, the top two vendors had almost 50% of the market, with Samsung at 35% and Apple at 13.4%.
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Strategy Analytics estimates that Lenovo and Motorola together captured 8% of smartphone sales last quarter, making the combined company the world’s third-largest smartphone vendor.
Google has completed the sale of Motorola Mobility to Lenovo. The Chinese maker of computers, servers and mobile devices is gaining 3,500 new employees, 2,800 of whom are in the United States. Lenovo is paying $2.91 billion for Motorola’s device business, but Google will keep the Motorola patent portfolio.
The Federal Trade Commission is charging AT&T with deceptive trade practices. The agency says that even though AT&T told customers about its policy, the information was not clear enough. For more on that, see today’s video below.
