News 2003
Virgin Mobile enjoys its best ever Q3 - and pips Orange!
05/11/2003
Virgin Mobile, Britain’s fastest growing network, today reported its best ever third quarter performance - a record trading period second only to last year’s Christmas quarter. During the summer months of July, August and September 2003, Virgin Mobile added 269,381 net new customers, more than double the growth squeezed out of arch-rival Orange over the same period. The outstanding performance, 16% up on Q3 2002, has lifted Virgin Mobile’s customer numbers by 56% since this time last year to well over three million, with customers at the end of Q3 2003 totalling 3,138,347.
These figures follow the record-breaking achievement set by Virgin Mobile during the first six months of this year, when the company added more net customers than Orange, O2, 3, T-Mobile and Vodafone put together.
The company says its 3p text tariff, and other value-focused offerings, is driving growth and customer loyalty. During the third quarter Virgin Mobile launched a range of new customer-focused services, including a £5 airtime voucher, at a time when some other networks have been raising the minimum denomination of their airtime vouchers in a bid to move people onto contract.
The company also launched a revolutionary range of specialist High Street outlets, a shop-within-a-shop, in partnership with Virgin Megastore. By the end of this month there will be 92 Virgin Mobile Specialist Stores with more to follow next year.
And in October Virgin Mobile launched the biggest customer reward scheme ever seen in the mobile industry - Glue. It encourages existing customers to introduce friends and family to Virgin Mobile, and rewards them with £10 airtime for each person connected, up to a maximum of eight each year.
Sir Richard Branson, Chairman of Virgin Mobile, said: “What you want, when you want, and how you want. These are the simple consumer ingredients of Virgin Mobile’s continuing and profitable success, as our excellent results this quarter prove – and with yet another squeeze of Orange thrown in for good measure, who could ask for more!
“We’re giving Britain’s consumers a choice – and the old guard operators a run for their money. Our rivals say: pre-pay is no good for them, so foist fleecing contracts on unwitting consumers. We say: consumers come to us, enjoy great value, and pre-pay if you want to, even with a £5 voucher, or pay any way you like – we don’t mind! No strings, no ifs, no buts.”
