The Orange PR machine has been in overdrive with the agreement the company has made to become the first operator to offer Google Mobile App across Europe. However, this interesting alliance was not adequate to disguise the fact that its UK Q3 revenues were down 15 per cent at £1.14 billion, while revenues for the first nine months of 2009 are also down around 15 per cent to £3.41 billion.
On a brighter note, Orange revealed that it recorded a 64 per cent rise in mobile internet subscriptions during the third quarter of 2009, reaching a total of around 4.7 million customers. The company was recently rated as the UK's No. 1 mobile broadband provider for getting connected and staying connected in a YouGov survey. Subscribers have benefited from cheaper mobile broadband plans with prices starting at £4.89 a month for speeds up to 3.6Mbps.
The picture is not much different for the parent company of Orange UK, France Telecom (FT), which has reported Q3 profits down by just over eight per cent. The company partly blamed this poor performance on regulatory measures but also the impact of the strong euro versus the Polish zloty and the British pound. Poland generates 10 per cent of FT's total revenue, while UK operations account for about 11 per cent. Domestic revenue accounts for almost half of overall FT group sales.
For more on this story:
Cable and Telegeography
Related stories:
Orange Signs Strategic Pan-European Mobile Partnership With Google
Orange UK tunes 3G to support iPhone; but no price war with other operators
Orange, T-Mobile merge UK operations
Become an MVNO within 6 weeks, promises Orange