Deutsche Telekom has reported that service revenues in its mobile division "did not perform satisfactorily" in the first quarter of 2012, dropping 1.8%. The carrier also lost 107,000 mobile contract customers in the quarter. As with most if its major competitors, the operator did report strong growth in mobile data usage and sales – with mobile data revenues increasing by 20%.
In Europe, 57% of all devices sold in the first three months of the current year were smartphones. DT said this was "a major factor" in an 11% increase in mobile data rates in Europe. More than half of this growth originated in the Netherlands and Austria.
Overall, Europe showed a slightly negative performance on a revenue basis. In Austria revenues were down 0.9%. Greece down 5.1%, Hungary down 4.8%, .Poland down 6.1%, Czech Republic down 4.9% and Croatia down 6.6%.
The countries to improve their revenue performance were The Netherlands, where income was up 0.7%, Slovakia (up 2%) and Romania up (0.8%). Total revenue overall was down 2.6%.
Telekom Austria saw revenues in the Austrian segment fell by 4.3% to EUR 706.3 million in the first three months of 2012 compared to the same period of the previous year. It said that this decline is mainly attributable to the regulatory-induced reduction of roaming and interconnection rates as well as to the challenging competitive mobile landscape in Austria and the resulting stronger customer migration towards ‘all-in’ tariffs.
As is becoming normal, the carrier reported a significant increase in mobile data traffic: and a 49% increase in mobile broadband subscribers at the group level.
In the mobile business customer numbers increased slightly by 2.7% to almost 5.3 million, with mobile broadband subscribers rising by 11.1% to 764,100. The no-frills brand “bob“ also showed growth in the quarter under review.