Vodafone under pressure

Vodafone has lowered its full-year earnings guidance, blaming pressure from increased competition in key markets such as India and the UK.

Competition in India has been ramped up by free offers from new entrant Reliance Jio Infocomm, but Vodafone plans to fight back by merging its Indian subsidiary with smaller rival Idea Cellular.

Vodafone is the world’s second-biggest mobile operator. Echoing a similar warning from BT last week, the company yesterday said that the rate of growth in its international business division had slowed. Reporting its third-quarter figures, Vodafone said it was seeing lower rates of growth in its global enterprise division and a marked slowdown in its international order book.