Carphone Warehouse, an independent mobile phone retailer in the United Kingdom, reported a like-for-like sales increase of 2.3 percent the fiscal fourth-quarter to March, as demand for its higher-priced LTE packages helped offset continued weakness in the prepaid market, Telecompaper.com reports.

The number of sales was still down just over 10 percent from a year earlier, to 1.89 million, amid an estimated 20-25 percent contraction in the prepaid market. The number of the retailer stores also fell 1.7 percent year-on-year to 2,024, with an increase in franchises and fewer directly-run shops. The company also had 31 Samsung stores in seven countries running, with plans to open another 30 across Europe.