In a news article today in The Register they ask the question, is he going to be the new Gordon Brown that took over from Tony Blair?
Like Gordon Brown Colao has been after Sarin’s job for a number of years and he is taking over at a time when Vodafone has been achieving record profits by following the dual strategy of keeping costs down at home and achieving rapid and exponential growth in the emerging nations such as India and China. You cannot continue cutting costs and the exponential growth in the emerging nations that is centred primarily on cheap mobile phones for voice and text use has to slow down.

We all know know that Tony Blair jumped at just the right moment, leaving his deputy to take over the mess and, more importantly, to take the blame for it. Is Vittorio Colao takes over a company that has expanded about as far as it can into new markets, and is already cut to costs as far as can be done at home and meantime he has that monster called a shareholder believing that the present strategy is right.

It was back in 2003 that Colao and Sarin competed for the job to head up Vodafone and Sarin was the victor. Colao then left and joined an Italian media firm, he fell out there with some of the shareholders and came back to Vodafone in 2006 no doubt with the promise of the top job when it became available.

When the new boss was asked about his plans for the future, he came out with a staement that has been repeated by all the mobile phone networks, that the future growth will come from the use of smartmobile phones that can access the internet and increasing the use of data using the likes of their latest high speed usb modems.

Mr Colao certainly has a big job on his hands and the likening of the siyuation to the Blair/Brown sittuation will be interesting to watch unfold.