Vodafone 3G Base Grows 2.5 Million During Q3

Vodafone has released its fourth quarter results: One interesting result is “subscription to Vodafone’s 3G services, such music, TV and video content, also increased in the third-quarter with 2.5 million buying 3G devices, bringing the total customer base to 13.6 million”, writes EasyBourse. All up Vodafone is claiming to have more than 200 million customers (198.6 million at the end of 2006, and passing 200 million in January), despite selling a number of subsidiaries. It added 8.7 millino customers in the last three months of 2007, with 5.6 million of those coming from EMAPA (Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, Pacific).
The report also indicates that organic growth in data revenue was 34.2 percent — this appears to be for the quarter, and to not include messaging revenue which Vodafone reports grew at 6.2 percent. The increase in data usage was primarily from business services and the increasing penetration of 3G devices. Unsurprisingly Europe was a strong driver of this growth, growing by 32.2 percent overall, with Vodafone Germany seeing a growth in data revenue of 57.7 percent. That’s a good figure even if it is off a small base…5.3 percent of revenues game from data in the final quarter of 2006, and 13.6 percent of revenues came from messaging.
There’s no breakdown of content in the report, but there are some figures on the number of Vodafone Live handsets in the market (which can access Vodafone’s content portal). There are 32.675 million in the group as a whole, with 28.677 million of those being in Europe. Despite the strong data growth in Europe and subscriber growth in other parts of the world Vodafone has challenges. Average revenue per user is falling in all the European countries, and few of its other markets fair any better.
(release PDF)