The wages of wireless

By the end of the month, Verizon Wireless says it'll have sold 200 million Get It Now downloads, a sign the operator's ring tone, screen savers and games service has "gone mainstream," believes Chief Marketing Officer John Stratton.

But is mainstream making Verizon Wireless any money yet? In the year's first quarter, sales of Get It Now products, newly introduced vCast mobile TV and wireless broadband generated revenues of $416 million, an increase of $216 million from a comparable period in 2004. Also, wireless data now represents 6.3 percent of Verizon's overall revenues, nearly twice the percentage from last year.

Those results make Verizon Wireless, arguably, the leader of the United States market in terms of wireless data revenues. But a warning; head-to-head comparisons are difficult because of the different ways operators report wireless data results. Here's one comparison: Rival Sprint, considered a top wireless data provider, notes in the latest financials, that the average Sprint wireless data customer spends about $6 a month, resulting in $120 million in wireless data revenue every three months.