About one in two in UK has mobile phone -analysts
LONDON, June 30 (Reuters) - Around one in every two Britons has a mobile phone, according to sales figures expected out next week.
The country's four current mobile operators are scheduled to announce second quarter sales and analysts said they expected the number of handsets among the UK's 59.1 million population to have risen to more than 30 million.
They forecast sales of 3.1-3.4 million in the quarter -- the great majority on pre-paid contracts.
``Pre-pay phones have been very popular and there've been some good promotions,'' said Jo Oliver, analyst at Lehman Brothers.
Orange , the third biggest operator, is expected to top the sales league again with 1.0-1.3 million new customers. But there is less agreement on how well the two biggest networks have done.
Sales forecasts for market leader Vodafone AirTouch Plc (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: VOD.L) ranged from 550,000 to 800,000 and for BT Cellnet (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: BT.L) from 531,000 to 700,000.
The Cellnet figures will depend on how popular the launch of its mobile Internet service has been. The company aimed to sell 500,000 WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) handsets in the quarter, but analysts doubt it has managed that.
Figures on WAP sales in Germany have been disappointing, said Hans Sanders at Schroder Salomon Smith Barney.
One2One , the smallest of Britain's four operators, probably sold 700,000-800,000 handsets, the analysts said.
Orange said it might release its figures as early as Monday. Cellnet and One2One said they are aiming for Tuesday, while Vodafone said it would report between Wednesday and Friday |
