Data revenues for the group was up 25.3 per cent to £786 million and it added 9.5 million mobile customers to its books, despite the world markets slipping into a severe recession during the last quarter of 2008. Service revenues in Europe rose by 15 per cent, benefited by the weakness of Sterling to the Euro after long periods of strength.

India led the emerging markets for Vodafone with record customer growth, and 29.6 per cent in service revenue growth.

last summer and was replaced by his deputy Vittorio Colao. Where his predecessor aggressively acquired companies and grew the Vodafone business to become a global giant whose brand is recognised throughout the world, Colao has looked to increase the revenue it can extract from that customer base and from the various business units to grow the company financially, according to market watchers.

Colao has also introduced a group wide cost savings programme with a target of £1 billion and Vodafone said today it was making "good early progress".

"We have continued to implement our strategy, with an emphasis on customer value, mobile data, enterprise and fixed broadband," Colao said. "This has driven increased usage, 25 per cent organic growth in data revenues and over 280,000 fixed broadband additions in Europe. We have also made progress on our plans to reduce costs by £1 billion by March 2011."