Evolving environment
Two years ago we updated our strategy to reflect developments in our industry and have made strong progress executing against our objectives since then. The communications industry continues to evolve and our five strategic objectives continue to position us well in this environment.
Firstly, customer needs and preferences in particular continue to evolve. We are transitioning from being a provider of core mobile voice and messaging services to offering a wide range of communications and one of the key advancements in the past year has been the mobile internet. Customers are taking content and applications from their PC to their mobile and this needs a compelling mobile internet experience.
We are, therefore, developing a range of internet services and content specifically for mobile by enhancing our successful Vodafone live! offering to include email, instant messaging and social networking while leveraging the power of mobile through location based services. We are also ensuring that devices are developed with innovative functionality and intuitive user interfaces that are suitable for the mobile internet, with features such as touch screen technology. Our investment in high speed data networks provides the platform to deliver these services to customers, as does the ongoing development of our customer information and support systems. However, these developments in our industry also challenge our traditional business model as partners such as software providers, internet companies and handset manufacturers also become competitors.
The industry is changing and, although the majority of our revenue will continue to be from our core mobile business, we are positioning ourselves for this change through our total communications strategy to deliver broadband and internet offerings.
Secondly, competitive and regulatory pressures continue to reduce prices in the industry and therefore we continue to stimulate additional revenue and reduce costs. On revenue, there is still significant opportunity for growth in mobile usage. Average mobile usage levels per customer in Europe remain well below markets such as the US and India and significant volumes of minutes continue to be carried by fixed networks.
Our established major cost reduction programmes are now delivering results and we are continuing to look at ways of managing our costs to maintain our market competitiveness. During the year, we have recently centralised our handset design and procurement to not only drive cost savings but also to facilitate the development of devices for the mobile internet. We also continue to standardise our network design and deployment, particularly in the core network to take advantage of an all IP infrastructure. One of the more important developments during the year has been the extension of network sharing across our markets, with agreements reached in Italy and the UK, resulting in site sharing in nine out of our ten Europe region markets. This is a key area of focus for us and we aim to build on the current level of around one third of sites shared and explore opportunities to extend the scope of network sharing. We have made good progress on our cost saving initiatives over the past year.
Finally, while penetration is very high in Europe, across emerging markets it is on average still much lower which, together with higher GDP growth prospects, provides a significant revenue growth opportunity. Over time, we expect these markets will also show the same demand for entertainment and internet based services that we are seeing in more developed markets and we are well placed to meet such demand.
Our money transfer solution, Vodafone M-Pesa/Vodafone Money Transfer, was launched earlier in the year and is proving to be a significant point of differentiation in Kenya as we provide some banking capability through mobile phones to a largely cash based country. This is an evolving area which we expect to bring to more countries and also has the potential to expand beyond the current focus on money transfers and micro payments.
As well as driving growth in our existing emerging market assets, we will continue to explore further opportunities to expand our emerging market footprint through selective investments, with a particular focus on Africa and Asia.