Vodafone rings up 9.5% leap

Booming demand for mobiles in Africa and India and for smartphones and data in UK and Northern Europe helped Vodafone today enjoy a 9.5% rise in annual profit to £9.5 billion.

The world's biggest mobile phone seller raked in revenues of £5.1 billion just from selling data to customers with smartphones in the year to April.

That is 26% more than the same time a year earlier. Revenues in emerging markets also helped boost the bottom line, up 12%, with the fastest-growing markets being India, South Africa and Turkey.

But Vodafone took a hit from the political uprising in Egypt, admitting revenues there fell 0.8%. "Egypt would have been a great story if our year had ended in December," said finance director Andy Halford. "We had the market-leading business and were growing very nicely. That did pare back, and it will take a few quarters for us to rebuild the growth."

Vodafone said in Europe it was seeing a north-south divide, with the UK, Germany and Netherlands seeing revenues rise 2.7%, and the rest of the region overseeing a 2.9% sales decline as weak consumer spending hit earnings.