BARCELONA, Feb 12 Mobile group Orange could take larger rival Vodafone's lead and conside

BARCELONA, Feb 12 (Reuters) Mobile group Orange could take larger rival Vodafone's lead and consider acquisitions in the red-hot Indian mobile market, but for now it remains keen to expand in Africa, its chief executive said on Monday.

''India is a fast growing market and if a right opportunity emerges at the right kind of valuation, we would look at it. I wouldn't rule anything out,'' Sanjiv Ahuja told Reuters in an interview.

Vodafone on Sunday announced it had agreed to buy a 67 percent controlling stake in India's No.4 mobile operator Hutchison Essar for $11.1 billion in cash, gaining a powerful presence in the world's fastest-growing mobile market to help offset slowing growth in its core European operations.

Until this deal, the British group had held a 10 percent stake in the India's top operator Bharti Airtel which it bought in 2005 for $1.5 billion.

But France Telecom-owned Orange said it was unlikely to take up minority stakes in emerging market operators, especially if it could not deploy its own brand.

''Our interest in emerging markets is that we have traditionally taken a controlling stake in an operator. That's what we generally like to ... Not having the Orange brand is not something that we look forward to,'' Ahuja said.

''Africa is where we look at significant growth in terms of subscribers. We have been very very successful and continue to plan to expand in those markets,'' he added.

Ahuja said Orange, one of the few major European operators to have a presence in Africa, was seeing ''solid double-digit revenue and double-digit subscriber growth'' at its African operations and forecast that continuing for some years.

Orange had 97 million customers in 24 countries at the end of December. Its biggest operations are in France and Britain.

The group has long been to keen on having a presence in the United States, but has been put off by prohibitive valuations.

''Over the last decade, Orange has looked at U.S. as a potential market. But at prices today, it is a fully-valued market. We have to do justice to our shareholders,'' he said.

Mobile operators have struggled to increase data revenues from areas other than text messaging. Third-generation mobile services such as video-calling and high-speed Web access are yet to provide a significant increase in revenues.

Ahuja said data-based services such as mobile music, video, mobile blogging and user generated content were gaining traction in Europe.

''That's where I see Europe evolving to as a mature market ... Is any one of these by itself significant enough, it's not clear. But if you put them all together, its absolutely clear that these next generation services are playing a significant role in the future of this industry,'' he said.

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