AT&T brags of its smartphone dominance

In AT&T’s latest advertising campaign, the company proudly proclaims it has the most smartphone subscribers out of the other major U.S. mobile operators, even without including the popular Apple iPhone into the final tally.

To date, the company has around 47 percent of the smartphone market cornered, with one-third of AT&T subscribers now using a smartphone.  In March, AT&T had 11.8 million smartphone subscribers, which is significantly higher than the 5.1 million total subscribers Verizon Wireless-Alltel had.

In a new commercial to be aired on cable television, AT&T promotes Research In Motion (RIM)’s BlackBerry Bold and Nokia E71x smartphones, though the iPhone — which has sold more than 21 million units since its release in 2007 — is likely the company’s top selling smartphone.

AT&T has been able to sign up so many smartphone subscribers because of its strong Wi-Fi and 3G networks, company officials said in a statement.

AT&T currently has 78.2 million subscribers, while Verizon Wireless, which was in the No. 2 spot, jumped ahead after its Alltel acquisition, giving it 86.6 million subscribers.

As the focus continues to shift more towards smartphones, I’m very curious to see how Verizon tries counter AT&T’s dominance of the smartphone market.  Mobile phone providers are looking to get subscribers to purchase smartphones so they can tie both text messaging and data plans into the subscription package.