Dive summary:

• There were 2.4 million mobile subscribers added in the third quarter, which is the first decline since the 1990s.
• Verizon accounted for 2.4 million added customers while there was slight growth by AT&T and a loss in contracts with Sprint and T-Mobile.
• Report from Chetan Sharma Consulting also finds that text messaging overall and per subscriber went down in the third quarter.

From the article:

Smartphones accounted for over 75 percent of new mobile phones sold in Q3, but Sharma points that while half of U.S. subscribers own a smartphone, they’re concentrated in just 30 percent of U.S. households. That means smartphones aren’t trickling evenly over the U.S. population, but rather flowing primarily into certain segments. Sharma notes that this means there is still huge potential for smartphone growth.