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The economic downturn has prompted a shift in mobile users' behaviour, with customers using less voice minutes, opting for text messaging instead, mobile network O2 Ireland said today.
The company, which is owned by Telefonica, said the monthly average revenue per user was down from €69.17 to €58.85 for post-pay customers in the final quarter of 2009. Prepay customers also spent less compared to a year ago, with customers paying a monthly average of €26.49 in the quarter, compared to €26.73 in 2008.
Chief financial officer Paul Whelan said trading conditions were challenging and there were limited signs of any underlying improvement in early 2010.
“During the quarter, there has been continued growth in data services, driven by the ongoing substitution by customers of mobile broadband for fixed services, and the popularity of market leading devices such as the iPhone," he said.
Customers were also changing how they used their mobile services, he said, by staying within a bundle allowance or using text messaging instead of voice services.
An increasing number of text messages sent during the final quarter of the year reflected a shift in customer behaviour towards messaging. Some 835 million text messages were sent in the quarter, compared with 738 million in the third quarter of 2009.
A total of more than 3.1 billion texts were sent by O2 customers in 2009. However, 4.6 billion voice minutes were used during the year.
Data revenue was driven by mobile broadband, which now has 133,000 customers in Ireland, with non-SMS services accounting for 11.7 per cent of overall service revenues in the final quarter of the year. The iPhone also continued to be popular throughout the year, outselling other smartphones offered by the operator.
