Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) released its interim results for the quarter ending 31 December 2007 Thursday. Third quarter revenues climbed 15.8 percent to £9.2 billion ($18.3 billion), fuelled by strong growth in emerging markets and mobile data. Organic mobile data growth for the entire group surged 41.5 percent. In Europe, mobile data helped service revenues climb a more modest 2 percent, with messaging revenue up 8.1 percent, and data revenue up 35.5 percent. The mobile operator, now the largest in the world has a reported a customer base of 252.3 million. Bloomberg reports that Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin said the operator had achieved “modest” revenue gains in Europe “by offsetting 15 percent to 20 percent price declines with sales of wireless Internet and e-mail services.” New customers in Turkey and India in particular helped drive up revenues. Acquisitions in the two countries saw the operator’s service revenues in the Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Pacific, Asia (EMAPA) grow 48.1 percent. Excluding acquisitions, Vodafone saw organic growth of 13.7 percent (Interim Results Here in PDF).

Other highlights from the results:

—Group voice revenue up 0.7 percent to £6.3 billion ($12.5 billion)

—Group messaging revenue up 7.7 percent to £1 billion ($2 billion)

—Data revenue up 41.5 percent to £558 million ($1.1 billion)

—Vodafone’s Infinity offer in Italy and bundled offers in the UK helped to grow messaging revenue of 16.9 percent and 21.2 percent respectively. In Germany, messaging revenue fell 8.6 percent, as the new voice tariffs with inclusive SMS led to an 18.7 percent fall in effective price per message.

—Data revenue continued to benefit from growth in business services and the increasing penetration of 3G devices, which now number 22.1 million and represent 20 percent of the European customer base.