{"id":31220,"date":"2013-02-06T07:37:23","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T05:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=31220"},"modified":"2013-02-06T10:12:11","modified_gmt":"2013-02-06T08:12:11","slug":"vodacom-boosted-by-smartphone-and-tablet-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/31220\/vodacom-boosted-by-smartphone-and-tablet-sales\/","title":{"rendered":"Vodacom lifted by smartphone and tablet sales"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vodacom<\/a> has on Wednesday (6 February) reported a 2.2% rise in revenue for its South African operation to R15.5 billion for the quarter ended 31 December 2012,\u00a0driven by a 27.2% growth in equipment revenue from smartphone and tablet sales.<\/p>\n

Group revenue increased 1.7% to R18.3 billion. Revenue was impacted by the sale of Gateway Carrier Services on 31 August 2012 as\u00a0well as movements in foreign exchange.<\/p>\n

On a normalised basis, group revenue increased 4.8% due to the growth in data services and\u00a0International operations, partially offset by the impact of mobile termination rate (MTR)\u00a0cuts, competitive pricing pressures and continued economic weakness\u00a0in South Africa.<\/p>\n

Vodacom said that smartphones remain a key strategic growth\u00a0driver with active smartphones increasing 29.2% to 5.8 million devices. Smartphone net additions increased in the quarter compared\u00a0to prior quarters, adding over 500,000 to its network, largely supported by the group’s working capital investment in handset financing.<\/p>\n

Smartphone data usage increased 36.1% to 138MB per smartphone customer, per month.<\/p>\n

“The appetite for data services amongst our\u00a0customer base remains strong, with active data customers increasing 20.9% to 13.8 million representing 45.2% of our customer base,” Vodacom said.<\/p>\n

“Customers purchasing data bundles are growing at 31.6% to 5.1 million, as we execute on our strategy to move customers to bundles.\u00a0Continued network investment is an important differentiator for Vodacom,” the group added.<\/p>\n

Service\u00a0revenue, however, declined 1.7% year on year to R12.5 billion. Excluding the impact of regulated cuts in MTRs, service revenue increased 1.4%\u00a0driven by the continued expansion of the customer base and increased data revenue offsetting the downward pressure on voice and\u00a0messaging services.<\/p>\n

Customer numbers<\/h3>\n

Active customers in SA increased 11.7% year on year to 30.6 million as Vodacom continued to attract new customers through\u00a0value offers and network investment.<\/p>\n

Prepaid active customers increased 13.2% to 24.7 million but overall usage was lower than
\nexpected as customers benefited from various promotional offers resulting in prepaid ARPU declining 15.6% to R81, Vodacom said.<\/p>\n

Contract\u00a0customers increased 6.0% to 5.9 million, adding almost double the net connections reported in each of the prior two quarters to\u00a0approximately 120,000 customers.<\/p>\n

The continued reduction of out of bundle voice spend contributed to the 9.1% decline in contract\u00a0customer ARPU to R329, the operator said.<\/p>\n

Group active customers increased 12.2% to 51.0 million as Vodacom said it attracted new customers through compelling value offers, superior network quality and network expansion.<\/p>\n

LTE coverage<\/h3>\n

Vodacom said it extended its\u00a0LTE<\/a> coverage in South Africa to reach Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town, with 542 active sites. Vodacom launched the commercial service of its LTE offering in October last year.<\/p>\n

The operator also continued to invest in its\u00a03G network adding 317 base stations in the quarter to 5,855.<\/p>\n

Shameel Joosub<\/a>, Vodacom Group CEO said:\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s been a quarter with strong performances in data and our International operations tempered by some challenges in our South African business.<\/p>\n

“During the quarter our investment activities were focused on maintaining network leadership, most clearly demonstrated by the commercial launch of Vodacom\u2019s LTE service \u2013 the first in South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on Vodacom<\/h3>\n

Foreigners eye MTN and Vodacom<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom profits beat Vodafone UK<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Vodacom shares up 2.3% on H1 results<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

We have appetite to grow: Vodacom<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vodacom has been boosted by a 27.2% growth in equipment revenue from smartphone and tablet sales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":23325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,27],"class_list":["post-31220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31220"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31234,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31220\/revisions\/31234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}