Vodafone's way ahead

Vodafone, the world's largest mobile phone company by revenue, has long been trying to increase its near 20 percent stake in Polkomtel, as well as its 44-percent stake in Vivendi Universal-controlled SFR, France's second-largest telecoms group.

"In our industry there continue to be opportunities around the world in high-growth markets," chief executive Arun Sarin said.

"We continue to look for opportunities in Asia. There are clearly one or two investments that we have, where we would like to take our investments up [increase our holdings] - countries such as Poland or in SFR [in France]. "You will see us growing the business organically as hard as we can, but equally keeping our minds open to whether we can grow inorganically as well," Sarin added.

Vodafone said it continued to focus on turning around its struggling, third-ranked Japanese business, Vodafone K.K., which it said was a 'multi-year program' that would suppress margins in the near to medium term.

Sarin also noted that while business trends were promising in the United States, where Vodafone holds a minority stake in leading operator Verizon Wireless, competition remained fierce in Europe and Japan.

"Frankly in the next six months, we can expect greater competition from the Telefonicas in Spain and the T-Mobiles in Germany and DoCoMo and [KDDI's] 'au' in Japan," he said, referring to Vodafone's top rivals in the three countries. (Reuters)