Telecom Lead India: Vodafone has leveraged the mobile
data potential in a significant way. Review of its second quarter revenue
reflects its efforts to improve mobile data revenue.
During the first quarter of 2012, data revenue grew by 17
percent driven by the increase in smartphone penetration, which is now nearly
29 percent in Europe.
In Turkey, date revenue growth was 69 percent. Turkey now
has 18 percent smartphone penetration, up 9 percentage points from a year ago.
In South Africa, data growth remained strong at 10 percent
in the quarter with the growth in data users and usage offsetting the intense
data pricing competition. Active data users now represent 46 percent of the
customer base in South Africa.
In Germany, Vodafone reported data growth of 20 percent
and messaging growth of 8 percent. Vodafone has 193,000 LTE customers,
including 20,000 LTE mobile customers and household coverage in Germany of
approximately 35 percent.
In U.K., data growth was 4 percent driven by growth in
mobile Internet and email revenues.
Date revenue grew 11 percent in Italy, driven by
increasing smartphone penetration and strong mobile Internet growth. As a
reminder, Italy is facing a large MTR cut in the second quarter this year,
which will have a negative impact on reported revenue through the rest of the
year,” said Vittorio Colao, CEO of Vodafone Group, during the analyst meet.
In Spain, smartphone penetration is now 41 percent, up 11
percentage points on last year, and these are driving mobile Internet and data
revenues, which grew 88 percent and 25 percent, respectively, in the quarter.
In the Europe region, the data drive is ongoing with
growth in data revenues of the region of 18 percent, fueled by rising
smartphone penetration, now at 29 percent, which is delivering strong growth in
mobile Internet revenues, up 47 percent in the quarter.
To improve data revenue, Vodafone has launched the Smart
II, a low-cost Vodafone-branded smartphone which is available in the U.K. at
GBP 70. Vodafone considers this as a clear drive to encourage high data usage
throughout our customer base whilst keeping the profitability of the migration
to data healthy.
In India, 3G data prices were reduced during the quarter.
However, Vodafone still sees the vast majority of data usage and growth coming
from 2G data services, supported by the Opera Mini product.
