Vodafone losses mount as eurozone woes threaten UK By contrast, the UK has been one of the company's stronger European territories over the past year, with Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao comparing it to a "good bottle of wine" just a few months ago. However, service revenues have shrunk by 2.1pc in the last six months as customers battled to cut their phone bills. Vodafone has also been forced to cut prices in response to fierce competition from rivals such as Orange and T-Mobile operator EE, which recently launched Britain's first superfast 4G services. Analysts were downbeat about the performance. Those at Berenberg said the "trends were a bit of a shocker" whilst Will Draper at Espirito Santo said the numbers were "tougher than expected." The picture was not entirely bleak, however. An 18pc surge in service revenues Turkey partially offset the slump elsewhere in Europe, whilst India and South Africa also saw substantial growth. In addition, Vodafone was buoyed by its 45pc stake in Verizon Wireless, the US mobile giant, which said on Monday that it will pay a $8.5bn (£5.4bn) dividend by the end of the year. The windfall marks Verizon Wireless" second dividend payment in 2012, following a hiatus of several years. Mr Colao said that he was "very positive about the longer-term opportunities" for Vodafone, especially the growth in internet usage over mobile handsets. Nearly a third of Vodafone's European customers now use smartphones and the group receives almost two thirds of its income from internet usage, up from 56pc two years ago. These figures are expected to grow significantly over the next few years, Mr Colao said. We expect smartphone adoption to accelerate in all markets over the next three years, with mobile applications and low-cost smartphone availability in mature and emerging markets alike. With the broad deployment of high speed data networks, we expect customers" appetite for data to increase significantly."