Briefly: Verizon pulls away from AT&T, Apple philanthropy

Verizon pulling ahead of AT&T

Verizon strengthened its position as the number one mobile carrier in the U.S. based on subscribership as the company announced a 7.7 percent rise in overall revenue to end the fourth quarter of 2011, with even bigger earnings seen by its wireless arm's $18.3 billion in revenue which represented a 13 percent rise year-to-year, reports The Wall Street Journal.

AT&T, on the other hand, reported a $6.68 billion loss for the quarter after a late-2011 pullout from a planned T-Mobile deal, though overall revenue rose 3.6 percent to $32.5 billion. The telecom activated a record 7.6 million iPhones over the holiday quarter, accounting for over 80 percent of all of the company's smartphone sales, however a bulk of those were to existing customers.

The new data makes it clear that AT&T is losing the customer sign-up battle even though it saw a 79 percent bump from the year ago period with 717,000 new users. Verizon's new subscribership eclipsed AT&T's numbers and added 1.2 million contract subscribers during the same period.

Verizon now serves 108.7 million subscribers compared to AT&T's 103.2 million users.

Apple charitable matching

Apple announced via Twitter from its Apple Retail Workers account that the company is expanding its charitable matching program to include part-time workers.

The program, first introduced by CEO Tim Cook in September 2011, calls for Apple to match employee non-profit donations dollar-for-dollar up to $10,000 a year. Originally, the plan was limited to full-time U.S. workers, but Cook promised that it would soon expand to other countries.

According to the most recent statistics regarding the gift matching initiative released in November, Apple and its employees raised $2.6 million.