Skip to main content

Emerging Market Mobile Subscriber Churn

Mobile operators will experience increasing struggles trying to hold onto their customers, according to a new global market study by Strategy Analytics.

On a global basis, the rate of subscriber churn posted its ninth consecutive quarter of annual growth, reaching 2.5 percent per month in Q1 2007. The main culprit for this increase is mobile service provider subscriber volatility in emerging markets.

This quarterly report provides a health check for the wireless operator community, tracking the operational and financial performance of 125 individual operators, accounting for 75 percent of the world's cellular users.

The report found that churn was relatively stable in Europe and North America, but continued to increase in Asia-Pacific, Central and Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

"Subscriber registration and re-verification procedures have highlighted the challenge of real subscriber growth in a number of emerging markets over the last few quarters," comments Phil Kendall, Director, Global Wireless Practice and author of the report.

"Operators in Malaysia were forced to disconnect nearly 20 percent of their prepaid subscribers at the end of 2006 as part of their drive to register all mobile phone accounts. Additionally, India's Reliance Infocomm disconnected nearly 6 million of its 30 million customers in Q1."

David Kerr, Vice President, Global Wireless Practice, adds, "The increase in churn highlights the challenge of managing subscriber growth in many prepaid-centric emerging markets. In these markets, where new connections involve simply placing a new SIM card into one's existing handset, competitive activity is having an increasingly detrimental impact on subscriber behavior and churn levels."

Popular posts from this blog

Digital Talent Demand Exceeds Supply in Asia-Pac

Even the savviest CEO's desire for a digital transformation advantage has to face the global market reality -- there simply isn't enough skilled and experienced talent available to meet demand. According to the latest market study by IDC, around 60-80 percent of Asia-Pacific (AP) organizations find it "difficult" or "extremely difficult" to fill many IT roles -- including cybersecurity, software development, and data insight professionals. Major consequences of the skills shortage are increased workload on remaining digital business and IT employees, increased security risks, and loss of "hard-to-replace" critical transformation knowledge. Digital Business Talent Market Development Although big tech companies' layoffs are making headlines, they are not representative of the overall global marketplace. Ongoing difficulty to fill key practitioner vacancies is still among the top issues faced by leaders across industries. "Skills are difficul

Mobile Device Market Still Awaiting Recovery

The mobile devices market has experienced three years of unpredictable demand. The global pandemic, geopolitical pressures, supply chain issues, and macroeconomic headwinds have hindered the sector's consistent growth potential. This extremely challenging environment has dramatically affected both demand and supply chains. It has led to subsequent inflationary pressures, leading to a worsening global cost of living crisis suppressing growth and confidence in the sector. In tandem, mobile device industry stakeholders have become more cautious triggering market uncertainties. Mobile Device Market Development Operating under such a backdrop, the development of mobile device ecosystems and vendor landscapes have been impacted severely. Many of these market pressures persisted throughout 2022 and now into 2023, borne chiefly by the smartphone market. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, worldwide smartphone shipments in 2022 declined 9.6 percent Year-over-Year

Global Digital Business and IT Consulting Outlook

Across the globe, CEOs and their leadership teams continue to seek information and guidance about planned Digital Transformation initiatives and the most effective enterprise organization change management practices. Worldwide IT and Business Services revenue will grow from $1.13 trillion in 2022 to $1.2 trillion in 2023 -- that's a 5.7 percent year-over-year growth, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). The mid-term to long-term outlook for the market has also increased -- the five-year CAGR is forecast at 5.2 percent, compared to the previous 4.9 percent. Digital Sevices & Consulting Market Development IDC has raised the growth projection despite a weak economic outlook, because of vendor performances across 2022, growth indicators from adjacent markets, increased government funding, and inflation impacts. The actual 2022 market growth was 6.7 percent (in constant currency), which was 87 basis points higher than forecast last year, alth