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European mobile carriers face a particularly tough challenge during the downturn, because of their intensely competitive and often saturated markets, and are turning to aggressive price cutting and new data plans to keep afloat. In some countries, this policy is so far having successful results, notably in Germany, where net additions of subscribers reached their highest level for seven years in 2008, despite penetration levels of 127.5%.

At the end of the third quarter last year - admittedly, before the downturn really bit in earnest in Q4 - quarterly net additions stood at 2.51m, up from 2.33m a year earlier, while annual net additions reached 12.53m, the highest figure since the 2001 boom, and representing year-on-year growth of 13.6% (compared to 12.5% in 2007). Q3 was the fourth successive quarter to see year-on-year growth of over 13%.

At the end of Q3 Germany had 105m mobile connections. T-Mobile led the field with 38.8m customers and 400,000 net additions, though the latter was the worst performance among the four cellcos. T-Mobile has scored lowest in terms of net adds for two quarters in a row, though it improved its showing from 140,000 in Q2. It now has its lowest market share ever, at 37%, mainly because of high churn levels around 1.2%.

Second placed Vodafone is also losing share and now has 34.5%, though it was the best performer in terms of net adds, with 900,000 in Q3. E-Plus gained .9% of market share to reach 15.2% and also had the highest overall growth rate, at 20.7% year-on-year. It now has over 16m subscriptions, 2m ahead of O2, which, however, boasted the highest ARPU at

€17.30 a month. Even this figure was 16.8% down on a year earlier, and all operators saw double-digit decline in ARPU, reflecting the way that they are maintaining growth by cutting prices aggressively.

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