Vodafone’s Chief Exec, Vittorio Colao, is hoping a new service known as Vodafone 360 will stop the wave of UK customers going with iPhone and Palm Pre carrier O2 UK reports the Telegraph.

Apparently Vodafone 360 is to be launched on 6 mobile phones in 8 countries before Christmas, and this move is seen as Vodafone’s counterattack against the iPhone and the iTunes App Store.

Colao has admitted that one of the reasons Vodafone had lost some 159,000 UK customers in the 3 months to June is because of the popularity of the iPhone, which Vodafone offers in 11 countries but not the largest European countries.

Colao added that mobile internet data services constitute roughly 10% of Vodafone’s revenue in mature markets, but hopes Vodafone 360 will boost this percentage further.