Vodafone brand makes India debut
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Global mobile provider Vodafone began using its own name across India Friday following its purchase of an Indian firm, rolling out what the company called one of the world&#39;s biggest rebrandings.
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British mobile phone giant Vodafone, grappling with intense competition in Europe, tapped into the booming Indian economy after winning control of Hutchison Essar for 11.1 billion dollars.
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(InfoWorld) - Vodafone Group had almost 200 million customers by Dec. 31, but continues to face challenges in the competitive and saturated European market. The operator's European business stagnated, with fourth-quarter revenue growing just 0.9 percent year on year, excluding the effect of acquisitions. Worldwide, its growth excluding acquisitions totalled 6.1 percent. The company accounts for revenue from partly-owned subsidiaries in proportion to its holding. Vodafone said that despite low growth in Europe, some of its new calling plans, such as one that offers users a lower price for calls made within their home area and others that include fixed-line broadband Internet access, are attracting new customers. Price competition, however, is offsetting that growth. Revenue from Vodafone's operations outside Europe, excluding acquisitions, grew 14.4 percent compared to a year earlier. Egypt, Romania, South Africa, and Turkey showed particularly strong growth during the period, Vodafone said. The operator offered no further insight into itsÂ negotiations to buyÂ a controlling interest in Indian operator Hutchison Essar. The board is continuing to investigate the possibility and will only agree to a deal that meets Vodafone's financial criteria, Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin said during a conference call to discuss the results. U.S. operator Verizon Wireless, in which Vodafone owns a stake, also did well during the quarter, with Vodafone's share of the business acquiring one million new customers. Vodafone is still pleased with its stake in Verizon Wireless, although the company uses a different wireless technology to that used by Vodafone's holdings elsewhere in the world. "There is no concept of our selling our interest there," Sarin said. While rumors have surfaced regularly over the past few years that Verizon Wireless might be considering a major technology change, that's still doubtful, Sarin said. Even Apple'sÂ much anticipated iPhone, which operates on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), the technology that competes with Verizon's CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) network, is unlikely to encourage Verizon to make a change, Sarin said. The migration to fourth-generation networks, which operators will begin to make in the next few years, will probably cement Verizon's choice. "That's the time Verizon Wireless will think about what next generation of technology that they can deploy and of course they'll try to deploy a technology that is as backward compatible as they can," he said. Data services are also paying off for Vodafone. Non-voice average revenue per user was up 62 percent for the quarter compared to the year earlier. Vodafone has attracted 50 percent of its total customers to sign up for Passport, a plan that offers reduced rates on roaming. The European Commission is proposing a regulation that would require operators to reduce their roaming rates. Vodafone doesn't expect the commission to make a final decision until this summer, said Sarin.
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British mobile phone giant Vodafone  Group Plc  said on Monday it added a net 4.5 million new  customers in the first quarter of its financial year, and  reiterated its full-year guidance.
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Vodafone has sharply increased its capacity in the United States after its joint venture in America, Verizon Wireless, struck a $3bn (Â£1.
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Mobile phone giant Vodafone reported that it had attracted 4.5 million new customers during the first quarter of its financial year.
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LONDON Vodafone, the world&#39;s biggest mobile phone operator, introduced long-delayed services like video calling across much of Europe on Wednesday, showing its cards four years after it got caught up in a $100 billion-plus bidding frenzy that gripped the
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Mobile phone group Vodafone said Thursday that it won 9.1 million new customers during its first quarter, almost double the amount a year earlier, owing to strong growth in emerging markets.
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Vodafone looks to have won the battle for control of Hutchison Essar, India's fourth largest mobile operator, according to people familiar with the matter.
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KPIs show network is performing Vodafone has published its key performance indicators for the last year, and things are looking good for the world's second largest mobile phone operator.â¦
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Vodafone sees its customer base rise more than expected in the last quarter of 2006, thanks to emerging markets.
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(InfoWorld) - Vodafone Group will introduce what could be its first mobile phone to carry its own brand exclusively, and not that of the phone manufacturer. A Vodafone spokesman confirmed that the phones will be introduced at an event in Hong Kong on Thursday, but would not provide additional details. The handsets will likely be made by China's Huawei Technologies Co., which said in February that it had signed an exclusive deal to provide Vodafone with its own brand of 3G phones. The phones would be sold in 21 countries, Huawei said, with the first handsets expected to hit the market in September. The deal with such a large operator marks a significant step for a Chinese manufacturer in Europe, which has been dominated by device makers from Europe, the U.S. and Korea. Vodafone already sells self-branded phones, but they also carry the name of the manufacturer. The handsets for its Simply offering, for example, feature the operator's logo prominently, but the name of the manufacturer, Sagem, is visible as well. Phones that carry an operator's brands exclusively are typically made by less well known phone makers. The operators often use them to improve their bargaining position with the top handset manufacturers, said Ben Wood, an analyst with Collins Consulting in the U.K. "A good [self-branded phone] strategy by network operators is a very effective stick to beat the major manufacturers with, to make sure they hit pricing in particular, but also the technology and functionality curves that the network operators want," he said. The self-branded devices are unlikely to steal much market share from the big handset makers, however. "It keeps them on their toes but I don't see it as a big threat," Wood said. "It's highly unlikely that the network operators can ever get the brand resonance on an own-branded device that manufacturers like Motorola, Nokia and Samsung get." That's partly because phone makers often spend several million dollars marketing a new phone in a single market, and operators are unlikely to match that, Wood said. In addition, end users aren't always happy with the service they get from their operator, so the self-branding may not instill loyalty. Operators typically offer self-branded phones tactically, to target a specific segment. For example, Orange sells a self-branded line of high-end phones targeted at business professionals. O2Â offers a self-branded phone for the low end of the 3G market. The new Vodafone phones may also target low-end 3G users.
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British operator Vodafone announced Monday at the industry's annual trade show in Barcelona that it would launch a money transfer service in Afghanistan after the successful introduction of a similar initiative in Kenya.
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InfoWorld - As part of a strategy to generate greater revenue from mobile data services, Vodafone Group has collaborated with Palm to launch a smartphone modeled after the&#160;Treo 750v&#160;but at a fraction of the price and with a newly designed user interface.
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BARCELONA/MUMBAI  - Britain's Vodafone Group Plc  has won the battle for a controlling stake in Hutchison Essar with a bid that values India's fourth-biggest mobile firm at around $19 billion, including debt.
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Vodafone is to kick-start a global push into 3G with an array of mobile phones that is likely to outstrip the range of handsets being sold by many of its rivals.
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LONDON/HONG KONG  - Vodafone Group Plc VOD.L   launched its first own-branded 3G handsets on Thursday, as the   mobile phone giant tries to expand in the market for   higher-paying third-generation services by luring more pre-pay   users.