(Telecompaper) Orange sold its profitable subsidiary in the Dominican Republic because its synergies with the rest of the group were not strong enough, according to the executive vice president for strategy and development, Elie Girard. He said to Les Echos, "The local market is converging between fixed and mobile. We did not want to take this path, which would have been financially costly." Speaking to La Tribune, group chairman and CEO Stephane Richard stated that African units may also be put up for sale, notably the less profitable ones. Brokerage house Oddo sees in this the view of shareholders that a stable EBITDA is more important than customer base. In 2010, Orange said it aimed to have 300 million customers by 2015 by growing in Africa and the Middle East and Asia. Richard told La Tribune that the group now has 50 percent more customersthan it did in 2009, which is "not so bad" in these times. He stressed that four large countries had joined the group, Morocco, Tunisia, Irak and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Orange now expects to have around 260 million or 270 million customers in 2015, according to a member of the executive committee.