Arun Sarin, the chief executive of Vodafone surprisingly stepped down recently. After a 6.7% increase in revenue as of March 2008 over the previous year, Vodafone appears to be primed for a position of solid growth in the near future. Don't believe me? Since 2004, after the appointment of Sarin, Vodafone was able to increase their customer base from 133 million to 260 million by tapping unused territories in southeast Asia. And look at the solid chart Vodafone has been able to acquire over the past couple of years. Vodafone recently inked a deal with Apple to sell the 3G iPhone in 10 countries, fitting right in with the ambitious marketing scheme used by this company to develop untapped wireless resources in India and Turkey. India is now the fastest growing wireless market in the world with more than 8 million new customers each month. This astounding growth is due in part to the vision of Arun Sarin, a presence that cannot be replaced. But it does appeared that he left the company in a position to continue solid growth as wireless subscriptions across emerging markets continue to rise.

The British based Vodafone, which owns a 45% share of Verizon Wireless, is second only in the world of wireless customers to China Mobile. And it appears that even though these two companies are competing for the same market, there is no bad blood by the looks of their latest agreement. This venture aims to establish a new Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) to develop new mobile internet services available from both providers. These innovations will be based on a widget platform that will not only be open source, but available to all frames of developers across every available mobile platform. This is quite ambitious, but by basing this on efficient widgets that can run on multiple operating systems, the future seems bright for this much needed venture.

This as you would expect, may directly impact the content that the American provider Verizon Wireless will be able to offer the United States public. No word yet on whether or not the Google Android OS will be putting its foot in the door of the Chinese and British market by participating in this venture.