telecommunications
Vodafone stops downward trend in mobile communications
Vodafone has stopped losing customers in the mobile phone business in Germany for the time being, but is still far behind the competition. photo
© Federico Gambarini/dpa
In the competition between the three German cell phone network operators, Vodafone was last behind, while its competitors Telekom and O2 pulled away. Vodafone is now presenting figures for the spring business. They are well received.
The telecommunications provider Vodafone remains under pressure. The group publishes figures according to which sales in Germany continue to fall.
However, the dwindling number of mobile customers has stopped for the time being: in the spring quarter, the number of mobile contract customers rose by around 24,000, compared to a drop of 11,000 in the first quarter of the year. Changes in the customer base have a delayed effect on sales.
Compared to the competition, however, growth in mobile contract customers is weak. For example, Telefónica Deutschland (O2) achieved growth of 368,000 in the first quarter of the year; O2’s number for the period from April to June is not yet available. Deutsche Telekom has also grown strongly recently.
Vodafone has lost market share in recent quarters, and the company wants to get back on the road to success with austerity measures and investments in better networks. When it comes to advertising, Vodafone wants to change: Germany boss Philippe Rogge wants to say goodbye to full-bodied advertising promises in order to prevent customer frustration and reduce the number of terminations.
important market
Germany is the most important market for the British group, 29 percent of the total sales of the global group are achieved here. A good 15,000 people work for Vodafone in Germany, a third of them in Düsseldorf.
The quarterly figures have light and shadow. On the one hand, the relief at Vodafone should be great that the decline in mobile customer numbers has come to an end. On the other hand, the company in Germany continues to get less money in the till: In the first quarter of Vodafone’s 2023/24 financial year, which began in April, Vodafone sales in the mobile service business in Germany fell by 1.9 percent compared to the same period last year and by 0.9 percent in the fixed network. After all, the losses were weaker than in the fourth quarter of the 2022/23 financial year, when 3.7 percent less was booked in mobile communications and 2.1 percent less in fixed networks.
In the fixed network, where Vodafone relies largely on television cable and only to a small extent on pure fiber optic connections, the company increased prices in the spring. Customers were not very enthusiastic, the number of television cable fixed network customers collapsed by 120,000. In the mobile phone business, on the other hand, Vodafone advertised tariffs with larger data volumes in order to improve the price-performance ratio.
Vodafone also operates in Italy, the UK and other countries. Group sales increased organically in the first quarter by 3.7 percent to 10.7 billion euros. This excludes exchange rate effects, hyperinflation in Turkey and other special effects. Industry experts had expected a little less. The quarterly figures were well received on the stock exchange, and the price rose.
In the meantime, it has become known that a German will soon be moving into the executive floor of the London headquarters: the long-standing SAP CFO Luka Mucic will start in the same position at the Vodafone Group in September.