Europe Top Ten Mobile Operators - Rankings

In Q3 2006, Ukrainian operator Kyivstar broke into the top 10 of Europe's largest mobile operators, claiming ninth place at the end of September, ahead of France's SFR. Fourth quarter figures now show that by the end of December, Kyivstar had moved up another two places to seventh, whilst domestic rival UMC joined it in the top 10, occupying its former ninth place and ousting SFR from the ranking altogether.

The chart below, which also shows 2005 year-end figures as comparatives, demonstrates quite how remarkable the growth of the two Ukrainian businesses was during 2006. It also shows the fall of the two German giants, T-Mobile and Vodafone D2 from first and second places in Europe, respectively, at the end of December 2005, to third and fourth, respectively, a year later.

As the chart shows, Italy's TIM and Turkey's Turkcell now occupy the gold and silver positions, with 32.4m and 31.8m customers respectively at the end of 2006. As we suspected, at the top of the ranking, Turkcell failed to take the number one spot from TIM in the fourth quarter, thanks to a much more difficult competitive environment in its home market courtesy of Vodafone. We would, however, be surprised if Turkcell did not take first place during 2007.

Meanwhile, in Q4 2006, the operator managed to extend its lead over third-placed T-Mobile Deutschland from 0.1m to 0.4m. TIM's domestic competitor Vodafone Omnitel was in fifth place in December, as it was in September, with Orange France also holding its sixth place. September's seventh became December's eighth, as Telefonica Moviles in Spain was bumped down by Kyivstar, whilst Telefonica-owned O2 UK fell prey to both Ukrainian businesses in the final quarter of the year, falling from eighth to tenth place as we suspected it might in Issue 48 of the Briefing.

The benchmark for entry into the top 10 for the year 2006 was almost 19m customers, tenth-placed O2 UK ending the year, as it did, with 18.863m at the network level. Now that the two Ukrainian companies have gained entry to the top 10 club, there are no other challengers to the ranking of Europe's elite operators - that is, apart from those recently ousted from the group. In reality the realistic challenger to re-enter the top ten in 2007 is SFR, which it should be remembered is operating in a market which is still just 80% penetrated, short of O2 squandering the considerable lead it has built up at the head of the UK market.

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"

Posted to the site on 27th March 2007