At the end of the quarter, Orange had a total of 33.1 million subscribers, up 58 percent from a year earlier. The company added 1.2 million customers in the UK, 779,000 in France and 660,000 in the rest of the world, the company said in a faxed statement.
On Thursday, Vodafone Group Plc, the world's largest, said it expects a slowdown in customer growth this year as the market nears saturation even after it added 4.4 million subscribers in the quarter. BT Wireless, owned by British Telecommunications Plc, increased its customers base by 20 percent to 25 million.
Phone companies in Europe, faced with a US$300 billion bill to set up faster wireless services, are shifting their focus to retaining existing customers and getting them to spend more on services. At the same time, they are cutting costs by scaling back subsidies on mobile handsets and other incentives.
Orange said its subscriber pool in France rose 39 percent from a year earlier to 15.1 million, while it increased by 84 in the UK to 11 million. Elsewhere, it gained 75 percent to 7 million.
In the UK, Vodafone gained 616,000 customers in the first quarter, while British Telecom's unit added 918,000.
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