DUBLIN, Ireland-Europe’s largest mobile-phone retailer shows no signs of relinquishing its market-leading position, with Carphone Warehouse announcing a 16-percent increase in connections during the past four months.
These 1.16 million new customers, who were split almost evenly between prepaid and contract connections, enabled the company to post a 5.2-percent revenue increase during the same period. “Over the year to date, the group has also continued to grow its recurring revenues, further improving the quality of earnings and increasing the lifetime value of our customer base,” said Chairman Hans Snook in a trading statement.
The figures appear even more impressive when taken in the context of flat growth in European mobile sales. IDC this week released a report confirming that saturation in the European mobile market is forcing operators to refocus their business strategies on retaining, rather than acquiring, customers.
Operators are anxious to curb high subscriber acquisition costs and churn levels. “They had accumulated large numbers of prepaid customers-in excess of 60 percent of total customer numbers in some case-who were not spending money. Prepaid has led to more headaches than operators had initially expected in the form of higher subscriber acquisitions costs and increased churn,” said Paolo Pescatore, senior analyst for IDC’s European wireless and mobile communications service.
