Ooredoo announced that as of March 31, the group’s consolidated customer base stood at 111 million, up 14 per cent year-on-year. Group revenue for the first three months in 2015 remained stable at QAR 8.04 billion (US$2.21 billion), down a per cent year-on-year. Group EBITDA stood at QAR 3.21 billion, down five per cent, while the group’s EBITDA margin fell to 40 per cent, down from 42 per cent due to what Ooredoo described as the continued strategic investments across the business into broadband networks, customer acquisition and retention.

Net profit attributable to Ooredoo shareholders for Q115 was QAR 501 million, down a massive 43 per cent, impacted by adverse currency movements primarily due to the depreciation of the Algerian Dinar and the Indonesian Rupiah.

The company reported that its strategy to become a data-centric business continued to make progress during the period. Customer and data revenue growth were all driven by Ooredoo’s investment in its broadband networks, data infrastructure, driving smartphone penetration and creating innovative new bundles and data offers for customers.

Group data revenue increased to 30 per cent of group revenue. The growth in data revenue reflects the growing adoption of data-based services, enabled by the pervasiveness of Ooredoo’s ultra-fast broadband networks.

Ooredoo now has 4G deployed across five out of its nine markets, with Ooredoo Kuwait launching 4G+ in March 2015. Algeria, Iraq, Qatar, the Maldives and Tunisia are all markets where Ooredoo is the market leader in data. Ooredoo is also rolling out service agreements with OTT players to drive and capture a growing share of data revenue in its markets.

Samsung reported that for its IT & Mobile unit, of which IT is by far the largest part, the company reported a 57.4 per cent year-on-year drop in operating profit to KRW2.74 trillion (US$2.56 billion) in Q115, on revenue which fell 20.2 per cent to KRW25.89 trillion. But, compared with the prior sequential quarter, operating profit actually increased by 39.8 per cent, on revenue which decreased by 1.5 per cent.

The company attributed the increase in quarter-on-quarter operating profit to decreased marketing expenses and the rollout of its new entry-level and mid-range smartphones.

Much of the company’s future success hinges on the performance of its Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge. But with the launch of the new premium devices, Samsung said that marketing expenses will rise in Q2 to support this.

In the first quarter, Samsung shipped 99 million handsets, of which “mid-80 per cent” were smartphones. The company expects its Q2 performance to be similar, but with a shift in mix following the launch of the new flagships set to improve its average selling price.

The numbers mean that Samsung remains the world’s number one handset vendor. Its smartphone leadership position was also reasserted, after Apple saw a dip following earlier strength thanks to the launch of its new iPhone line – with a single smartphone line, Apple’s performance is more than usually affected by its release timetable.

Tablet sales for Samsung in Q1 were “about nine million”.

Network revenue declined quarter-on-quarter due to decreased investment by overseas operators.

Samsung is looking to drive its 2015 growth by enhancing its product competitiveness and improving R&D efficiency by “streamlining line-ups”.

On a group level, the company reported a net profit of KRW4.63 trillion, down 38.8 per cent year-on-year, on revenue of KRW47.12 trillion, down 12.2 per cent.

Ooredoo Oman today reported that revenues for Q115 were up 12.5 per cent to OMR 59.3 million (US$154 million) year-on-year, driven by increases in both mobile and fixed data revenue.

EBITDA for the quarter amounted to OMR 33.8 million, up 23.8 per cent year-on-year due to higher revenue, while net profit came in at OMR 10.7 million, up 21.6 per cent due to an improvement in EBITDA that was partially off-set by investment in network modernisation and expansion.

Total number of customers grew by 11.6 per cent in Q1 2015 from 2.43 million to 2.71 million.

The fixed service customer base decreased by 11.1 per cent to 58,435 customers in Q115, accounted for by the transition period to a new home broadband technology that is set to bring improved services to Ooredoo customers. The mobile post-paid customer base grew by 5.1 per cent to 199,206 customers, while the prepaid customer base for the quarter was up 12.8 per cent to 2.46 million.

India’s largest mobile operator Bharti Airtel reported that its net income almost doubled for the fiscal year ending March 31, maintaining the growth momentum from Q3 when its profit jumped 135 per cent.

Its profit rose 87 per cent to INR51.8 billion (US$811 million) for the year, with revenue rising 7.3 per cent to INR920 billion. India turnover increased 12 per cent to INR645 billion, with mobile representing 80 per cent of that. Non-voice revenue accounted for 23.7 per cent of mobile revenue – up from 17.4 per cent a year ago.

The company saw sharp gains in data revenue across all regions, but continued pressure on voice pushed aggregated ARPU down except in India. Mobile data turnover in Q4 grew 60 per cent from the previous year.

Airtel, which has operations in 20 countries, said its customer base increased by almost 29 million to 324.4 million.

The company’s subscriber base in 17 African countries grew 10 per cent to 76.2 million, with data customers increasing 30 per cent to 36 million. Non-voice revenue accounted for a quarter of turnover.

Data ARPU rose five per cent, but voice ARPU fell 15 per cent, pushing overall ARPU down 20 per cent to US$4.40. Total revenue from the region fell one per cent to INR269 billion.

The company’s MD and CEO for Africa, Christian de Faria, said Airtel Africa grew revenues by 7.5 per cent in constant currency terms during FY14-15 amidst rather tough economic conditions.

There its customer base grew by 6.8 million and the Airtel Money customer base expanded by 2.7 million. “With 3G operations now in all 17 countries and with 3,088 new 3G sites, data revenues have increased by 61.3 per cent in constant currency terms,” he said.

Airtel’s capex last fiscal year increased 76 per cent to INR186 billion. India accounted for 63 per cent of the total, with capex increasing 94 per cent from the previous year. There it added almost 8,000 base stations, taking its total to nearly 150,000 – one-third of which are 3G.

EBITDA margin rose 1.7 points to 34.2 per cent.

Etisalat is set to raise up to US$500 million through a re-opening of its June 2019 bond, which is expected to price later today, a document from lead arrangers showed.

Price guidance for the issue has been set in the area of 80 basis points over midswaps, the document showed. The bonds will be fungible with those issued earlier in the series after 40 days.

Etisalat, rated Aa3/AA-/A+ by the main credit agencies, said in a statement to the stock exchange that it would issue bonds under its US$7 billion global medium-term note programme. It did not provide any details.

HSBC and National Bank of Abu Dhabi are bookrunners for the bond tap.