Vodafone Ireland Q4 revenues boosted by growth in smartphones and enterprise

19 May 2015

Vodafone Ireland this morning reported revenues of €935.8m, down 2.6pc year-on-year. The company reported that 1.3m of its 2.3m customers now sport smartphones.

In its preliminary results for its fourth quarter, Vodafone reported a total Irish customer base of 2.3m at the end of March this year, out of which 2m were mobile customers.

The company’s fixed-line voice and broadband customer base grew by 25,700 – up 10pc — to 282,300.

During the quarter, Vodafone’s enterprise revenues grew 4pc due to winning new contracts with large companies, including handling the communications and IT needs of Ryanair across Europe.

Massive 127,800 increase in smartphone users

Vodafone said that Irish customers with smartphones increased by 127,800 during the year to 1.3m.

Mobile data usage across 3G, 4G and 4G+ increased 77pc in the fourth quarter.

Vodafone also pressed ahead with a €450m fibre-to-the-home joint venture with ESB entitled SIRO, which aims to bring fibre broadband to 50 towns across Ireland.

“In a highly competitive market, our performance demonstrates a continued improvement in trends during the year proving the effectiveness of our strategy, which is to become the total communications provider of choice in the Irish market,” said Vodafone Ireland chief executive Anne O’Leary.

“As part of that strategy, we have seen growth in our enterprise revenues and continued migration in our customer base from pay-as-you-go to contract subscriptions, thus delivering value-added services to our customers.”

Globally Vodafone profits fell to £5.76bn from £59.2bn the previous year when earnings were boosted by the sale of its 45pc stake in Verizon Wireless to Verizon for US$130bn.

Annual revenues globally for Vodafone rose 10.1pc to £42.2bn, helped by its acquisition of Spanish cable firm Ono and Kabel Deutschland (KDG), which is the largest operator in Germany.

Smartphone image via Shutterstock

 

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com