AT&T is raising its expectations for full-year smartphone sales after...

Q4 AT&T’s second best quarter for smartphone sales; quarterly figures typically improve even more during December, de la Vega said Wednesday during an investor conference. The carrier now forecasts it will sell 26 million smartphones for the year, 1 million more than previously expected, de la Vega said. AT&T has also continued to see better-than-expected adoption of its “Mobile Share” data plans, de La Vega said. The carrier has signed up 5 million customers to the plans during the less than four months they have been available. AT&T began offering its plans in late August; No. 1 U.S. wireless carrier Verizon Wireless began offering its “Share Everything” shared data plans in June (WID Aug 23 p2). Average revenue per user from the AT&T plans is also higher than expected, de la Vega said. That comes in part because a higher-than-anticipated 25 percent of customers on the plans have opted to buy the highest tiers of data service -- 10 GB or more per month, he said. When Verizon Wireless began offering its shared data plans, it made them the only option available for new customers; AT&T offered its plans along with other plans, including an unlimited data option. Still, 15 percent of AT&T customers subscribing to the shared data plans were previously on the unlimited data plan, de la Vega said. The better-than-expected adoption of shared data plans has also driven up sales of tablets, as has a recent AT&T $100 subsidy, de la Vega said. The rising interest also comes because of increased availability of tablets that operate on the two leading non-Apple iOS operating systems, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows, he said. “I just can’t even fathom how many tablets will be under the Christmas tree,” de la Vega said.