Most Tablets Sold With Data Plans, AT&T Says

The majority of customers who buy tablets from AT&T Mobility now also buy mobile broadband service with their devices, says Glenn Lurie, AT&T president of emerging devices, wholesale and partnerships. Most of those devices seem to use a prepaid data plan, rather than a postpaid plan. More tablet users buy mobile service

That’s a big deal. In fact, for the first time in the U.S. wireless history, non-operator branded wireless connections were the majority source of customer additions in the second quarter of 2011.

Also, almost half of the increase of mobile connections came from customers that are mostly unaware of the network they were actually using. Amazon Kindles, Barnes & Noble Nooks, countless other connected devices, and MVNOs such as TracFone were driving the growth of the industry with more than 52 percent of net additions, says Roger Entner of Recon Analytics.

The second largest growth segment was no-contract with almost a third of new subscriber additions. Contract net additions were less than 16 percent of overall net subscriber additions. B2B now drives mobile broadband

According to research from Recon Analytics, more than half–52.7 percent–of the U.S. wireless industry’s 4.4 million new wireless connections in the second quarter of 2011 came from wholesale subscribers and connected devices.

Connected devices include gadgets such as tablets, e-readers, netbooks and machine-to-machine connections. Connected device subscriptions

That would be a significant development, as one might argue most users will typically have to spend $50 a month for a prepaid service including 1 Gbyte of usage.