Vodafone Group has posted half-year pre-tax profits of £8.24bn for the six months to the end of September, on sales of £22.6bn. The figures compare to £5.75bn on sales of £21.8bn in the previous half year. Revenue from data services showed growth of 25.9 per cent.

Announcing the results, the company said that since November 2008, it had seen tangible evidence of accelerating mobile data adoption, with consumers and business customers seizing the benefits of fast, reliable mobile data networks, using smartphones and other mobile data devices such as tablets.

Vodafone says it is also seeing increased interest in broader data-based services such as  payments via handsets, and an initial wave of mobile devices for homes and cars. In emerging economies, where revenue growth is still being driven by increasing penetration of mobile devices, it adds, data penetration is low, but demand for access to the internet is high, and to a large extent, can only be satisfied by mobile networks.