Two mobile companies claim 4m users

VODAFONE and O2 have close to four million mobile phone customers in Ireland despite the population being just 4.58 million.

Both companies also confirmed a massive surge in smartphone usage in the last few months.

Yesterday Telefónica Ireland, which operates the O2 brand in Ireland said economic conditions remain “extremely challenging” with consumer sentiment taking longer than expected to recover.

Chief financial officer with Telefonica Ireland, Paul Whelan, said that in response the company is continuing to extend its range of price plans, focusing on the “value and flexibility”.

Service revenue for the first six months of this year was €352 million, down from €389m for the same period last year.

He said the company is mainly driven by the better value-for-money products it is offering its customers, as well as cuts in the mobile termination rates it charges to other operators to carry calls on its network.

Last week Vodafone retained its position as Ireland’s leading telecommunications network company, in terms of customer numbers, by growing its subscriber base nearly 3% in its last quarter.

O2’s total customer base, including mobile and fixed customers, was 1.687m at the end of June, down 8,200 in the second quarter. It has 1.669m mobile customers while Vodafone has 2.2m.

The number of O2 customers using Smartphones increased 40% year on year, to the end of June, while O2’s mobile broadband customer base increased by 20,000 to reach 165,600. Its postpay customer base increased by 12,000 in the first six months of the year.

Mr Whelan said: “We are extremely pleased with the uptake in data which continues to be a key growth driver, now accounting for 40% of our mobile service revenues, as more customers use smartphones and other mobile internet devices on O2’s high-speed broadband network.

“This year has also seen O2 move into cloud computing through a major strategic partnership with Microsoft. Business customers can now avail of a packaged offering where O2’s core mobile and fixed services will be offered with Office 365, Microsoft’s new cloud productivity solution.”

Telefonica Ireland’s joint venture with Tesco — Tesco Mobile — also recently announced it now has over 100,000 customers.

At O2 monthly average blended average revenue per user was down slightly quarter on quarter, from €34.4 in quarter one to €34.0 in quarter two.