Virgin Mobile reports strong sales

Virgin Mobile has defied gloomy market trends to report a small increase in mobile phone sales over the last quarter of 2001.

It made more than 264,000 net connections in the quarter, a 1% increase on the same period last year.

Virgin Mobile, which is jointly owned by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group and Deutsche Telekom's One2One, had sales of just over 262,000 in the same quarter in 2000.

The fourth quarter figures, which include the Christmas sales period, were up 54% against the previous quarter.

The growth over the fourth quarter brings the total number of new customers acquired by Virgin Mobile in 2001 to 770,549, and its total customer base to 1.45 million.

Virgin Mobile expects to be the only network to accelerate and grow more than during the same period last year.

Its figures run counter to newspaper reports of a 45% fall in industry handset sales compared with Christmas last year.

The reports led to the share price of Carphone Warehouse, Europe's largest mobile phone retailer, falling by 10% on New Year's Eve.

Virgin Mobile says it expects to become profitable in the early part of this year, and its operating costs - except for acquisitions - are now covered by revenues.

The operator plans to increase its presence in the UK's major supermarkets, Virgin Megastores and V.SHOPs this year.