VODAFONE, the world's largest mobile phone company, yesterday said it had sold 4.35 million third-generation devices at the end of August - a rise of about a million since the end of the previous month.
The figures will be heartening for the industry, because while 3G handsets have been available for years, adoption has been slow and the devices have struggled to find their marketplace.
However, Vodafone, led by chief executive Arun Sarin, said that better networks, more handset variety and improved screen and battery life was expected to boost sales over the Christmas season.
Christmas will be a key trading period for all European mobile phone operators, which to date have made only cautious predictions about how many people they expect to buy the new phones, which offer MP3s and CD-quality sound, high-speed web access and video calls.
European operators have invested more than GBP100m on 3G licences.
Vodafone said yesterday that all its new 3G phones would offer services such as a choice of more than 500,000 music downloads as well as mobile television services.
The company, which held its so-called investors' day yesterday, said the 4.35 million 3G devices comprised 3.95 million consumer devices and 400,000 data cards, at the end of August.
Vodafone also indicated that it was already looking beyond its current 3G offering by announcing the launch of HSDPA, a faster version of 3G, in the first half of 2006.
Nonetheless, the company saw its share drop by around 1.3-per cent after it said was focused on turning around its Japanese business but expected greater competition in Europe during the next six months.
Vodafone also said it was still looking for acquisitions in Asia, Poland and France.
The shares fell 2.75p to 151.5p.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article