China Mobile’s Zong posted strong growth, increasing its subscriber base by more than 1.2 million customers to 17,801,032 by the end of September, 2012. Warid Telecom, on the other hand, continued its downward spiral, losing more than a million subscribers during the same quarter to rank last among local cellular mobile operators, with 12,646,458 subscribers.
Market leader Mobilink remained on top with 36,073,988 subscribers – but added only 25,861 consumers to its mobile customer base during the period.
Telenor and Ufone were both able woo more than 200,000 subscribers during the same quarter. Telenor added 266,283 mobile users to its network. It now has 30,162,943 subscribers and retains its number two position. Ufone once again finished at number three with 23,829,009 customers, after adding 278,739 new users by the end of September 2012.
In terms of growth in the subscriber base, Zong remained on top, followed by Ufone and Telenor; Mobilink finished above Warid, which seemingly donated more than a million subscribers to other networks.
“Zong has the cheapest calling rates, which is one of the main reasons behind their growth,” said Muhammad Raza, a telecom analyst at Elixir Securities. Zong has the lowest average revenue per user (ARPU) in the telecom industry.
Raza said that every new player offers cheap calling rates in the beginning to gain market share. “There will come a point when they will have to increase their tariffs,” he added.
Commenting on the contraction in Warid’s subscriber base, Raza claimed they lost these consumers in early 2010 but are only updating their database now. Their subscriber base is, therefore, showing negative growth each quarter.
According to the PTA’s statistics, the cellular industry of Pakistan has surpassed 120 million mobile subscribers. The country had 120,513,430 million subscribers as of September 30, 2012, up from 119,860,799 in May 2012, when PTA last updated its website.
Mobile penetration, however, decreased to 68.3%, down from 68.8% in May 2012. “This slight dip in mobile teledensity may have been caused by Warid because of its database updating exercise,” Raza said.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 5th, 2012.
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Mobilink is still number 1
I'm also considering switching from Warid. They have the worst calling rates now.