Vodafone Group claims to have over 2 million customers for its Vodafone Live! GPRS service worldwide. The service launched in October 2002. It added over 250,000 Live! users in July 2003, and claims that ARPU grows by 7-10% once a customer has signed up the service, reports Mobile Communications. Vodafone does acknowledge that the increased ARPU could be put down to the novelty effect of customers experimenting, and accepts that the ARPU figure could fall off in the next few months as the novelty wears off. Despite the impressive launch, analysts believe the service faces major challenges. Vodafone had just under 1.5 million Live! subscribers worldwide at end-May 2003, accounting for just 2% of its total subscriber base. This places Vodafone Live! way behind NTT DoCoMo's i-mode and J-Phone's J-Sky services in Japan.
