Vodafone Group plans to sell 15 new third-generation (3G) handset models in the run-up to Christmas, aiming to woo the mass market into adopting the latest mobile phones, the cell phone giant said yesterday.

The world's largest mobile phone operator by revenue said 10 of the new phones would be exclusive to Vodafone, with six of them targeted at entry-level customers.

"We are confident that this is going to be a 3G Christmas," Chief Marketing Officer Peter Bamford said in a statement.

The run-up to Christmas is a key trading period for European mobile operators, which have made only cautious predictions to date about how many people they expect to buy the new phones, which offer MP3 players and CD-quality sound, high-speed web access and video calls.

European operators, which have invested more than €100 billion on 3G licences alone, are facing falling prices for voice calls and text messages in increasingly mature European markets and are keen to boost customer spending on mobile data services.

Analysts said they expected other operators to follow suit and forecast a higher proportion of 3G handset sales this Christmas, but said the bigger beneficiaries were likely to be handset makers and retailers.

"There is a huge difference between selling 3G handsets and selling 3G services. A lot of people may buy handsets because they are cheap and look good, but spending patterns may not change," said Nomura analyst Mark James.

Vodafone said four new handsets - two made by Sharp and two by Toshiba - would target higher-spending customers. For example, Sharp's 902 Ferrari phone will feature exclusive Ferrari content.

The entry-level phones, also exclusive to Vodafone, will include two handsets each from Sharp and Samsung and one each from Motorola and Swedish-Japanese alliance Sony Ericsson.

Non-exclusive handsets include a version of Motorola's iconic RAZR, the V3x, as well as the Nokia N70 and 6280 and the SGH-Z500V and SGH-Z140V phones from Samsung.