5 years of chronic under-performance at Vodafone

Link: Scotsman.com Business – Technology – Questions remain on Sarin’s tenure.
I picked the Scotsman’s coverage of yesterday’s Vodafone annual general meeting between the management and shareholders. It’s written by Martin Flanagan – I liked his take on it. I’ve quoted a few points below….

However, one shareholder, to applause, said this just masked chronic five-year under-performance, ranging from strategic U-turns to the miserable share price.

I still remember Vizzavi. They really could have been a contender. They really could have taken their 80 million european customers (at that point) and pulled them together to rival the likes of Yahoo, Freeserve and World Online/Tiscali. Google was coming at that point. Myspace was a glint in the milkman’s eye.

Instead they dumped it all, vomitted up Vodafone Live and are, depending on your viewpoint, relegated to bit player data pipe — seemingly without knowing it.

Another called the directors “a board of charlatans”.

Heh. Oooh my.

Like with many disputes, the problem is that both sides are right.

Oh I have to disagree with this statement. One side is right and it’s not the management. You know there’s a problem when I could pull a better strategy out my aaaaaaaaaaaa… moving swiftly on.

It’s all very well being the world’s largest mobile company, but my friend Natalie can’t use picture messaging — or anything else on her phone (which is 4 months old, direct from the Vodafone shop) but she can text and call. Pathetic.

You know there’s a problem when you can’t take the heat in Japan.

You know there’s a problem when people start ‘discussing’ selling your North American stake. Bit player, baby.

But it is in transition because other operators like Google and Yahoo are trying to eat its lunch.

Trying? ARE. Vodafone had it’s chance. It’s a pipe. It’ll need to do a News Corp pretty pronto (that is, pay absolutely over the odds to sort its interent strategy out re MySpace).

Vodafone is strong in European markets. But the problem, as Sarin said, is that if you want a mobile phone in those markets you probably already have one.

Which Natalie does. She’s paying you ARPU and no more because you COULDN’T get her a handset that was properly configured. She walked out of the Vodafone store with it NOT WORKING. It was a mild annoyance to her that she couldn’t send picture messages and send videos. Mild, but, the worst bit is she expected it and she’s comfortable with it. It is par for the course.

The only option for Vodafone is to get customers to trade up to 3G networks and download their lives.

Ah, geez. It’s so depressing thinking about what they could have done.

Meantime, what is it, £2.35 a meg to transfer data from your handset? £0.125 to send a text message? Keep making the hay!