Bharti Airtel Misses Profit As Price War Brews

ERIKA KINETZ

MUMBAI, India (AP) — Bharti Airtel Ltd. reported a lower-than-expected profit Friday as a brewing price war among India's mobile operators depresses margins and threatens to erode the market share of India's largest mobile telephone company.

Net profit for the July to September quarter grew 13 percent from a year earlier, to 23.21 billion rupees ($493.8 million), while revenue grew 9 percent, to 98.5 billion rupees ($2.1 billion).

"We are ready to face the challenges posed by heightened competition," chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said in a statement. "We are confident of emerging winners through our superior offerings."

Bharti said it had 113.4 million customers at the end of September, up 42 percent from the same time last year. However, its market share fell to 23.5 percent, from 24.6 percent a year earlier.

India's fast-growing mobile phone sector is getting increasingly crowded, and the race is on to recruit subscribers.

In June Tata DoCoMo, a joint venture of India's Tata Teleservices Ltd. and Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc., launched in India, offering per second instead of per minute billing.