More than half a million persons joined Verizon Communications Inc. as subscribers in the last quarter, which indicates the company's robustness even before the launch of the iPhone scheduled for February.

Analysts had expected to enroll 650,000 subscribers but the actual numbers were about 872,000 for the contract based plans. These plans based on contracts are the most lucrative for the company, and Verizon has confirmed that 75 percent of these subscribers went in for smart phones that have added fees for data.

An Apple device has helped Verizon even before it has gone into the market with the iPhone. The reason for this could be their sales of the iPad computer which is a tablet that has a device for accessing the Internet. It started these sales in November. Verizon also sells a tablet with a data plan, made by a competitor. This is the Galaxy Tab made by Samsung Electronics. 86,000 tablets have been sold by Verizon so far.

In December,Verizon launched its cellular data network that uses '4G' technology and this has helped the launch of the iPhone. Within a period of three weeks it was able to sell 65,000 modems that works as plug-ins for laptops.

The net income of this company, which is New York based, is to the order of $2.64 billion for the last quarter of the year 2010, which translates into an earning of 93 cents for every share. A year ago this figure was just about 22 cents for each share from an earnings of $617 million. This dramatic increase however has been helped by the adjustments
made by the company to the values in its retirement plans.

If these are excluded, the earnings translate to a per share value of 54 cents, which was just a little short of the FactSet survey estimates done by analysts.

Revenues have also shown a fall of 2.6 percent and came to $26.4 billion against a previous figure of $27.1 billion and a shade below estimates made by analysts. The revenue reduction is attributed to the sale of outlying area landlines and the subsequent reduction in revenue from them. 

Shares of Verizon rose 2.5 percent in morning trading to $36.10 which is a rise of 85 cents. Early January had seen a lot of excitement among investors about the prospects of the iPhone and this had led to shares being valued at $37.70.

Verizon has confirmed that it is going to sell the Apple iPhone from the 10th of February, something that was only a rumor up to now.

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