Vodafone, its brand taped on every sporting phenomenon from Formula One to football, is continuing to walk away from the world’s most mature cellular markets. This week's exit from Swisscom Mobile, its 25% stake traduced for a mere UK£1.8bn, is just the latest sell-off of its kind.

It follows similar departures over the last 12 months or so from Sweden, Japan and Belgium. Vodafone appears to lack the stomach for a fight in these mature markets, even if ostensibly it talks of getting rid of 'minority' shareholdings in markets such as these.

The correlation between per capita GDP and mobile expenditure is fairly well established so it looks to an unsympathetic eye as if Vodafone has lost its appetite for a fight. To date, only its Verizon stake in the US has bucked this trend.

If logic rather than expediency is at the root of Vodafone’s strategy then this must now go, too. Negotiating the right exit price and the right tax breaks appears to be a problem, however.

Where Vodafone is in danger of fouling its corporate trousers is in its apparent desire to rebuild its revenue base in the BRIC economies and other emerging markets. It boasts token presences in China and India and yet is invisible in Russia and Brazil. Straight line growth in BRIC and emerging markets is clearly attractive, but it may be elusive, too.

It stretches the imagination to assume that ground-up growth in developed markets can somehow be translated into an utterly different form of market growth in advancing markets. Historically, Vodafone has done many things very well. One analyst expectorating under the cloak of anonymity describes their current strategy as that of “witless prats”.

The feeling is that Vodafone is cashing in its chips at some of the richest cellular tables in Europe an beyond, but is simultaneously failing to find somewhere else to offload them.

Hence ‘mony a mickle maks a muckle', which for those of you not versed in Scots means ‘lots of little things add up to a big thing’. The muckle so far as Vodafone is concerned right now appears to be a lack of bravery and ambition.
Jim Chalmers