Nearly 25 million customers
Focused on profitable growth. We now serve nearly 24 million customers in the UK, Germany, Ireland and the Isle of Man and offer international roaming to 160 countries worldwide.
Changing the way sport is sponsored. Helping to enrich and enliven our customers' lives, we've concentrated on creating world-leading interactive partnerships with global brands like Arsenal, England Rugby, BMW Williams Formula 1 and Bayer Leverkusen. Working with these high profile partners, our aim is to spread the benefits of sponsorship down to the grass roots.
Creating a "Can Do" culture. Investment in the O2 brand has yielded high levels of spontaneous awareness across all our markets. The hallmarks of the brand are fresh thinking and making a difference to create a better experience for our customers. Our brand and our people work hard to meet those expectations.
On every High Street. As well as driving excellence through our own stores, we've teamed with major UK retailer, Tesco, to launch Tesco Mobile - a new, simple, value for money mobile service through over 500 of its stores.
In October 2004, O2 Germany launched a 50/50 joint venture, Tchibo Mobilfunk, with Tchibo - a well-established consumer brand known for its value-for-money offers. This additional and exclusive sales channel complements O2's target segments and by the year-end had added more than 250,000 new pre-pay customers.
Mobile data services that our customers really value Texting has become a way of life - whether in person-to-person messages, texting questions to the Prime Minister or voting off Big Brother contestants. We carried a record 50 million texts on Christmas Day 2004 and texting continues to grow in all markets. Driven by O2 Active, our award winning mobile internet portal, we are also starting to see significant growth in non-text data usage, revenues from which have increased by 50 per cent over the past 12 months.
Fast growing. Fuelled by the success of the unique Genion "HomeZone" service, O2 Germany has established itself as the most dynamic and innovative operator in the German market - the largest in Europe. In 2004/05, both revenues and customer numbers accelerated throughout the year, outstripping both our expectations and our competitors, and leading to further growth in market share.
Award winning
Recognising the impact of the O2 brand on our business performance, O2 UK won the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising's (IPA) prestigious Grand Prix award for 2004. We also won The Mobile Data Association's "Best Network of the Decade" award for being the most innovative in "encouraging the uptake of mobile data over the past ten years".
"home-away-from-home"
Shaping the future. As a founder of the Starmap Mobile Alliance, O2 is planning for the new generation of mobile telephony, 3G. The alliance promises speedy access to new products, seam less roaming services, simple flat rate tariffs and a "home-away-from-home" experience for more than 53 million customers in 11 countries across Europe.
O2 Active - better than ever
Further developments of O2 Active, the simple-to-use portal for news, information and downloads, helped drive this success. A revamped, more intuitive homepage, including a scrolling ticker of news headlines, received positive customer feedback and drove higher usage. As at 31 March 2005, O2 Active was available on 100 different handsets.
Promising results for a unique service The Airwave network was completed, on time and on budget, at the end of March 2005. The O2 Airwave service - designed to make communities safer by enabling the emergency services to communicate freely with each other - has now been delivered to all police forces in England, Scotland and Wales.
First in participation TV. We were quick to spot the explosion of participation TV and are now the leading provider of text messaging services on hit TV shows such as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? And Pop Idol. The final of Pop Idol 2, for example, attracted 1.4 million text votes in the first hour.
Way ahead in mobile music. We've signed deals with all leading major music labels and independents to bring a choice of over 40,000 tracks to customers via their mobile phones - anywhere, anytime.
Committed to community. Making a connection with people is integral to O2. We want to be at the heart of communities by listening to and learning from everyone's views. Our chosen charities, including the International Youth Foundation and Milly's Fund, benefit not only from funding, but from our technology too. Our "Teach UR Mum 2 Txt" initiative was honoured with the GSM Association's "Best Use of Mobile for Accessibility" award - which aims to highlight the positive social benefits that GSM mobile communications have brought to people and communities globally.
Intuitive and tuned in. Our award winning, easy to use, data services menu, O2 Active, has fast become the UK's most widely used mobile portal. Enabling news, sport, entertainment, games and ringtones to be downloaded instantly to mobile phones, it's been an immediate hit across our markets.
£1 billion a year
Forward thinking. Until not long ago our revenues were all from traditional voice telephony. Today our customers spend over £1 billion a year on data services such as text messaging, e-mail on the move, games and internet surfing.
Offering more to society than mobile phones. Using our technology in innovative ways, we are pioneering new applications and services that can benefit society. From remote monitoring of asthma sufferers, to paying for congestion charges and downloading traffic information - our mobile phones are increasingly a lifeline as well as a lifestyle.
