“While operations in Northern Europe, Emerging Markets and the stake in Verizon Wireless all did well, operations in Southern Europe struggled. This is no surprise. Indeed, at a time of worsening economic conditions, especially in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, it would have been too much of a miracle for Vodafone’s numbers in those regions to come out well. Spain and Italy were particularly hit hard. But Vodafone has worked hard to stabilize things as the impressive performance of data connectivity shows. Particularly, Vodafone’s effort to move customers to ‘integrated tariffs’ (bundle of voice, SMS & data) is welcome. Not doing so, while persisting with per unit pricing for voice and SMS, opens the way for OTT services such as WhatsApp and Skype to gain inroads in the market.”