MEA Operators in Q3 2006: The Top Ten

The list of the ten largest companies in the Middle East and Africa region in the third quarter 2006 contains the same ten businesses that were listed in our second quarter roundup in Issue 39, but there have been a number of changes in the order. Vodacom in South Africa retains its first place, but its share of the regional market has fallen by nearly one percent - from 9.03% to 8.13% - during the quarter, as a result of a change in the way it defines active customers. This reduced the overall base by 179k, leaving it with 20.2m at the end of the quarter.

Vodacom may have experienced a decline in its overall share in the September quarter, but it is still by far the largest operator in the region, with a lead of more than 7m customers over STC, the market leader in Saudi Arabia and the second placed company in MEA. Its lead over its domestic rival - MTN's South African subsidiary, the third largest operator - is nearly 9m. STC ended the quarter with just over 13m customers, or 5.25% of the regional total, while MTN came in with 11.3m, or 4.55%.

Itissalat Al-Maghrib, the market leader in Morocco, has moved up from seventh place in the June quarter to fourth at the end of September. Itissalat added over 1.5m new customers in the quarter to overtake both MTN Nigeria and TCI of Iran, though as we shall see, neither of these performed badly. MTN's Nigerian subsidiary closed the quarter in fifth place, with 10.4m customers, up from 9.6m at the end of June. TCI of Iran, which stayed in sixth place, became the sixth company in the region to pass the 10m mark, ending the quarter with 10.13m customers. Orascom's Algerian subsidiary also passed this particular milestone, but dropped back from fifth to seventh, with 10.005m subscribers.

Of the top seven, only Itissalat increased its share of the regional total (from 3.95% to 4.22%) but all three of remaining operators have managed this. The privately owned Nigerian operator Globacom had another very strong quarter, adding more than one million customers for the third time in a row, to take its total to 9.5m. Both the ninth and tenth placed companies come from Egypt, with the Orascom/France Telecom joint venture Mobinil just ahead of Vodafone Egypt, with 8.1m and 7.9m respectively.

In total, these ten businesses have just over 111m customers, or around 45% of the region's total. This is an increase of 8m over the June figure and of 31m over the September 2005 total, implying an aggregate annual growth rate of nearly 40%. However, the leading companies' share of the regional total has dropped both quarter on quarter and year on year by 87 basis points and 315 basis points respectively. If the top ten grew by 39% and still lost that amount of share, what does this say for the other businesses in the region? Mainly driven by demand in Africa, these other companies have grown nearly half as fast again, increasing their combined customer base by over 50m, or 58%, to 137.5m.

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 The Mobile World"