Iraq Q3 2006 Market Update - Mobile World Briefing

The market shares of Iraq's three main mobile licensees moved closer together again in Q3 2006. MTC Atheer, the smallest of the three players, grew its customer base by 17.2% in the three months to 30th September 2006 - well above the market average of 11.7%. Almost all of its 1.5pp gain in market share came from Orascom Telecom Iraq (Iraqna), which underperformed the market with growth of just 7.2%. Wataniya's Asia Cell posted an 11.3% increase in customer numbers, which, at just below the market average, saw it lose just 0.1pp of share during the period.

The result was that Asia Cell moved into the lead in the Iraqi mobile market for the first time, with 2.54m customers to Iraqna's 2.50m. Atheer Telecom remains in third place but was closer than ever to its two rivals with 2.44m customers at the end of September.

The picture of the Iraqi market excludes the two licensees in the Kurdish controlled Northern Iraq - Korek Telecom and Sanatel. These add just over 1m additional customers to the Iraqi total of 7.484m at the end of Q3 2006, which is up by more than 4m - or 165% - on the count of 3.457m at the end of Q3 2005.

The mobile penetration rate in Iraq stood at 27.8% at the end of September, which represents an improvement of 2.8pp on June. In terms of penetration progress Q3 2006 was the slowest quarter for over a year - testament to the fact that the quarter on quarter growth of 11.7% was, once again, the lowest the market has ever seen. This kind of pattern is only to be expected as the market moves out of its early growth phase, where there was a high degree of pent up demand which had to be satisfied.

Quarterly net additions are also falling in absolute terms, however, compounding the effect, in a sign that progress towards the 50% penetration mark may well not be as rapid as the race through the first quartile has undoubtedly been.

This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World. To download a sample issue of the Briefing in PDF format, please click here. For more information including full subscription pricing, please visit www.themobileworld.com"

Posted to the site on 21st November 2006