O2 will get a boost from the Iphone factor

VODAFONE MAY rue its decision to back out of the race for Apple's Iphone if AT&T's experiences with the handset are duplicated in other markets. In Blighty, O2 and Carphone Warehouse will probably have big smiles on their faces come Xmas.

AT&T Wireless said it had added two million subscribers in Q3 2007 giving it a total of 65.7 million subscribers.

Of those two million, around 1.1 million were accounted for by Iphone users and approximately 40 per cent of those subscribers were new AT&T customers.

Given that O2 has some 17.785 million subscribers in the UK, then proportionately it should acquire some 298,000 Iphone users. Of those, round about 120,000 will be stolen from the other operators.

AT&T's Randall Stephenson was also making some encouraging noises about ARPUs (average revenue per user) which has risen by two per cent – largely fuelled by higher usage of wireless data.

O2 will be happy if the same thing happens in the UK, particularly if the number of subscribers possessing some form of data plan is the same as AT& T's – only 35 per cent.

It's hardly surprising, therefore, that Stephenson described wireless data as "a huge opportunity". µ