Here’s AT&T’s plan to grow now that everyone has a mobile phone

AT&T reported middling financial results for the third quarter with revenue of $31.5 billion leading to net income of $3.63 billion. Those sales are essentially flat from the same quarter a year before as is income. But behind those numbers is a shift occurring as AT&T’s big bet on wireless starts paying off.

AT&T’s saw wireless revenues rise by 6.6 percent year over year with data revenues up 18.3 percent. Wireline declined as a percentage of revenue by 3 percent. But given the saturation of the U.S. mobile market, AT&T is not taking its wireless success for granted. Instead it’s figuring out how to get existing customers to spend more. On the call it touted its growing base of smartphones (customers with smartphones spend almost twice as much as those with feature phones) and the take rate of its new shared family plans announced in August.