Telefonica Europe - the parent company of O2 UK - has released financial results for the first half of 2011. It now has 57.3 million customers across its European operations, a 5% increase from last year - and it says revenue was up 2.2% year-on-year to 7.7 million Euro (£6.7 million), which is a 3.2% increase if the effect of mobile termination rate cuts are excluded.
Matthew Key, Chairman and Chief Executive of Telefónica Europe, said “We trailblazed a number of new innovations across our markets in the second quarter. In the UK we continued to drive transformational change in the market with the formation of a new joint venture with other mobile operators to accelerate services in the m-commerce sector and the deployment of nationwide WiFi. At the same time, we are focusing on initiatives that enhance the experience of our customers by providing them with additional value,m such as the recent launch of Priority Moments - a UK first in location-based advertising and loyalty services, the introduction of the O2 Money card in Ireland and the rollout of O2 Gurus across Europe.”
In the UK, the company’s customer base (excluding 2.7 million people on the Tesco Mobile MVNO) was 22.1 million users, a year-on-year increase of 2%. The customer base is now 48% contract, 52% prepay. Over 82% of new connections were smartphones, pushing overall smartphone penetration to 35%.