Vodafone’s encouraging data revenues
Rating: There’s gold to be had in those there data services
by Tony Dennis
Yesterday’s results from Vodafone for the
year ended September 2007 make fascinating reading if for no other reason than
they are incredibly detailed. They do actually show, for once, that mobile
operators are finally beginning to make decent money out of data.
The figures also show that there’s something like 100 times more money to be
made out of messaging than there is from other forms of data.
Vodafone’s total income from data was £967 million compared to £12.16 billion
from messaging.
However, if you take the UK then Vodafone has now reached a
stage where messaging and data combined form over 25 per cent of total
revenues.
What has caused this? CEO, Arun Sarin, says, "Data revenue increased by
45.1 per cent on an organic basis [48.8 per cent on a reported basis],
principally enabled by the rapid growth in 3G devices, which nearly doubled
year on year to over 21 million devices."
The exact figure is 21.4 million 3G devices in 2007 compared to a mere 11.1 in
2006. That’s a tiny amount considering that in total Vodafone can claim some
241 million subscribers in total at present.
What has Vodafone done to raise its data
revenues, though? According to Sarin, "We have also refreshed our consumer
mobile internet offering in eight markets, supported by partnerships with
leading internet players, and are continuing to develop products and services
to integrate the mobile and PC environments."
Yet text and picture messaging are
continuing to bring in the bucks. "Messaging revenue remains robust with
8.6 per cent organic growth, including strong performances in Italy and the UK driven primarily by targeted
promotions and tariffs."
So where does Sarin think the future lies?
With advertising, of course. "We believe mobile advertising is a
significant future opportunity for the mobile industry," he says. "We
have commercial agreements for mobile advertising in eight markets and are
trialling numerous forms of banner and content based advertising."
The figures show that the potential for growth in content and other data
services is very real. But the uptake of 3G devices has got to improve if data
is going to make a serious dent in the money operators make from voice calls.
Vodafone’s results in brief Europe EMAPA 2007 2006 % change Reported Organic
£m £m £m £m
Voice revenue 8704 3499 1948 1786 48.8 45.1
Messaging revenue 1575 377 12160 11317
Data revenue 843 127 967 650
Registered 3G devices 21.4 11.1
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