Carphone Warehouse Group, Europe's biggest mobile phone retailer, recorded a 19.2 per cent rise in quarterly mobile phone connections and said it was confident on the full-year outlook.
The group said growth in the second quarter was driven by a strong performance from its retail outlets, as opposed to newspaper offers, and strong demand in the pre-pay mobile market.
Broadband additions were slightly weaker at 89,000 but Finance Director Roger Taylor told Reuters he expected this to be boosted in the third quarter by a free laptop offer.
In the other key indication of its performance, the rate at which it moved customers to its own network and not BT's was ahead of targets at 55 per cent of the broadband base.
Carphone, which has Europe's biggest mobile phone stores chain, said it expected to report headline pretax profit of between 53 million pounds and 56 million for the first half.
Of the 2.8 million total mobile connections it now has, 1.1 million were subscription connections, reflecting a 9.3 per cent increase in the quarter, while pre-pay connections were up 26.8 per cent to 1.6 million.
Analysts had been expecting an increase in total connections of 13.3 per cent and 14.1 per cent for subscription connections, according to a company consensus.
Carphone, an independent retailer not attached to any mobile network, has secured the UK distribution deal for Apple Inc's iPhone and the retailer said it expected to get a significant competitive advantage when it launches in November.
Taylor said he expected the iPhone to be a top seller this Christmas, which would increase the number of customers entering its shops.
He also expects a boost from the laptop offering which is available with its AOL broadband subscription and which launched in September.
The company said it had seen a positive impact on sales but Taylor said none of the net new broadband additions included the AOL deal as it took time to connect customers.
The group added 89,000 broadband customers, below the consensus of 103,000 forecast, to give it a total of 2.5 million. It moved 411,000 customers in the quarter on to its own network to give it an on-net base of 1.4 million or 55 per cent.