Orange could look at acquisitions in India

Posted on | February 13, 2007 |

France Telecom-owned Orange could take rival Vodafone’s lead and consider acquisitions in the Indian mobile market, says its chief executive Sanjiv Ahuja.

“India is a fast growing market and if a right opportunity emerges at the right kind of valuation, we would look at it. I wouldn’t rule anything out,”

But its current focus is the fast growing African markets.

“Africa is where we look at significant growth in terms of subscribers. We have been very very successful and continue to plan to expand in those markets,” he added.

Orange had 97 million customers in 24 countries at the end of 2006. Its biggest operations are in France and Britain.

I find the following comments in the article telling. Look! Heres a leading operator from a developed mobile market talking about the state of VAS.

Mobile operators have struggled to increase data revenues from areas other than text messaging. Third-generation mobile services such as video-calling and high-speed Web access are yet to provide a significant increase in revenues.

Ahuja said data-based services such as mobile music, video, mobile blogging and user generated content were gaining traction in Europe.

“That’s where I see Europe evolving to as a mature market… Is any one of these by itself significant enough, it’s not clear. But if you put them all together, its absolutely clear that these next generation services are playing a significant role in the future of this industry,” he said.

Source: ET

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