Press Release
February 4, 2003
mmO2 Records Best Ever Quarter For Mobile Data Growth
mmO2 today recorded its best ever quarter for mobile data growth in the three months to the end of December 2002. The company broke previous records for text messaging (SMS) and has maintained its position as market leader in the UK, it doubled the number of GPRS active users across its territories and reported encouraging early progress for its new interactive services - Java games and multimedia messaging (MMS).
Peter Erskine, chief executive officer, mmO2, said: "Data as a proportion of service revenues increased to 17.7% from 15.6% in the last quarter, underpinning our leading position in this expanding market and ahead of our stated target of 16% of service revenues from mobile data by the end of this financial year."
Group-wide (UK, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands), more than 2.2 billion text messages were sent in the three months ending 31 December 2002, an increase of 19% over the previous quarter. Half a billion text messages were sent by O2 UK customers during December and nearly 28 million messages delivered on New Year's Day. This is the largest volume of person-to-person messages handled by a UK operator in a single month.
mmO2 also reported an encouraging start to its portfolio of interactive services. Since launch, the company has added over 100,000 active customers for its Java games and MMS services, of which 80% are in the UK. Usage is expected to increase throughout 2003 with the introduction of full MMS interconnection between network operators and a greater choice of multimedia, colour-screen handsets.
MMS interconnect agreements with other network operators are being established by mmO2 across its territories. It recently announced the first such deals with Orange and T-Mobile in the UK and O2 customers in Germany now have full interconnect with T-Mobile, Vodafone and E-Plus.
In addition, mmO2 has continued to grow the use of its medium speed GPRS mobile data networks and significantly increased its active customer base to more than 200,000 at the end of December 2002.
Peter Erskine added: "We continue to see significant revenue potential in SMS, including person-to-person, premium and wholesale text messaging. This is being supported by initial growth in revenue generated from GPRS services as customers increasingly adopt new mobile data applications such as Java Games, MMS, mobile email and Internet access."
Note to Editors
Xda from O2
Sales of the xda have continued to show steady growth. Around 40,000 devices have been sold. Latest market research figures show that mmO2 has a 46% share of the voice-enabled PDA market in the UK and 19% in Western Europe.
BlackBerry
In the business market, uptake of mmO2's corporate email on the move solution - BlackBerry - continues with more than 16,000 devices now sold to almost 600 contract customers across the Group's four territories.
GPRS roaming mmO2 now has GPRS roaming agreements in over 20 countries, including Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
mmO2 mmO2 has 100% ownership of mobile network operators in four countries - the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland - as well as a leading mobile internet portal business. All of these businesses are branded as O2. Additionally, the company has operations on the Isle of Man (Manx Telecom).
mmO2 was the first company in the world to launch and rollout a commercial GPRS (or 2.5G) network and has secured third generation mobile telephony ("3G") licences in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Germany.
mmO2 has approximately 19.1 million customers and some 13,500 employees, with revenues for the year ended 31 March 2002 of ?4.276 billion. Data represented 17.7% of total service revenues in the quarter ending 31 December 2002.
