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Drop Seen in New Subscriber Rate for Local Mobile-Phone Operators

Posted on: Wednesday, 23 November 2005, 21:00 CST

By Srisamorn Phoosuphanusorn, Bangkok Post, Thailand

Nov. 24--A gloomy economic outlook, an unprecedented price battle and a highly saturated market have resulted in a critical drop in new subscribers for local mobile-phone operators this year.

A decline in new sales growth was in line with the estimates of most analysts, who said figures would continue to weaken for the rest of the year because of declining private consumption, shrinking spending and increasingly saturated market.

The mobile phone market in the first nine months of this year grew at a progressive rate -- the number of new subscribers stood at 1.5 million as of Sept 30 -- well behind the estimates of major operators who had projected between three million and four million new users this year.

The number of additional subscribers is now expected to reach just two million by year-end.

The overall penetration rate of mobile phones is expected to reach 45 percent this year, bringing total users to 28.5 million. The rate in 2004 was 41 percent, with 26.5 million users.

Market leader Advanced Info Service (AIS) added 700,000 subscribers in the first nine months on a total subscriber base of 16 million as of Sept 30.

Second-ranked DTAC had 705,000 new customers, bringing its total to 8.3 million as of Sept 30. TA Orange, ranked third, had about 100,000 new users for a total base of 4.2 million.

Even though the top three operators have braced themselves for slow growth this year, AIS has vowed it will continue to lead the market.

"Our below-target sales figure was in line with the overall industry's growth on the back of economic uncertainty and a record-high churn rate due to the unprecedented price war," said president Yingluck Shinawatra. "We were not the only operator facing shrinking sales and revenues, our rivals have also been experiencing the same problem."

Ms Yingluck is optimistic that the purchase of DTAC by Telenor, its Norwegian strategic partner, will help reverse the industry's price-cutting trend and bring in creative products and services next year.

Despite this month's price war among smaller rivals, Ms Yingluck insisted AIS would no longer do battle since it would do more harm than good for the company.

"Given our large subscriber base, AIS is now focusing more on retaining existing subscribers rather than acquiring new customers," she said.

AIS yesterday introduced a "One SIM, Two Numbers" service, which enables prepaid and postpaid customers to have two mobile phone numbers under a single SIM card registration.

The service, which aims to attract 50,000 customers this year, lets users answer incoming calls on two numbers simultaneously. AIS now has one million customers who have two mobile phone numbers.

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Copyright (c) 2005, Bangkok Post, Thailand

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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OGE, TCSAF, AVIFY, TELN,

Source: Bangkok Post

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