AT&T's third quarter 2012 results just hit the wire, making ol' blue the second major U.S. carrier to report its earnings for the quarter. AT&T saw some growth across the board in its revenues, which includes wireless data revenues increasing 18.3 percent year over year to finish at $6.6 billion and total wireless revenues growing 6.6 percent to $16.6 billion. Wireless operating expenses for Q3 2012 settled at $12.3 billion, an 11.3 percent jump from the year-ago quarter, while wireless operating income dropped 5.6 percent YOY to finish at $4.4 billion.

AT&T says that it managed to sell 6.1 million smartphones in Q3 2012, an increase of 1.3 million from Q3 2011. Smartphones made up 81 percent of AT&T's postpaid device sales for the quarter, meaning that 44.5 million (63.8 percent) of the big blue carrier's postpaid subscriber base are toting smartphones. When it comes to specific devices, AT&T says that it activated 4.7 million iPhones in the quarter, adding that it "had its best-ever sales quarter" for Android and Windows Phone products. 

The total number of AT&T wireless subscribers grew 678,000 in the third quarter, finishing the three-month period at 105.9 million. That includes 151,000 postpaid additions, a figure that AT&T says was "impacted by iPhone 5 constraints," explaining that most of its stock went to existing customers. Prepaid additions for the quarter were 77,000, connected device additions were 313,000 and reseller net additions were 137,000.

AT&T also touched a bit on its usage-based data plans, saying that 28.5 million (64 percent) of its smartphone customers are on such a plan. Around three-fourths of customers on tiered offerings have chosen a higher plan. AT&T feels that its Mobile Share plans have gotten a warm introduction, with 2 million customers signing up for one of the plans in the first five weeks of availability. That may not be a huge chunk of the number of customers on any type of usage-based plan, but I'm sure that AT&T is still happy to see its users adopting the new data share plans. AT&T also notes that a third of Mobile Share customers are selecting plans with 10GB or more of data. The big blue carrier is holding its Q3 2012 results call in about an hour, so we'll give you a heads up if it has anything else of interest to add to these stats.

Via AT&T