Pakistan - 10 Million New Customers in 2007

Almost 2.8m new mobile customers joined the ranks in Pakistan in the month of April - the second highest total ever recorded in the market, behind October 2006. Monthly proportionate growth stayed above 5% by a whisker, after 5.1% in March, taking the total customer base in the market to 58.4m and penetration to 34.7% from 33.0% a month earlier. A total of 10.0m new customers were added in the first four months of 2007, these being shared almost equally between the market's four largest operators.

Telenor garnered the biggest portion, with 3m or 30% of the total, ahead of Mobilink (27%), Ufone (25%) and Warid Telecom (21%).

Despite its overall lead in terms of net additions so far this year, Telenor slipped back in April, recording the lowest number of net additions of the big four. Close competitor Warid Telecom itself recorded a market-best 8.5% increase in customer numbers in April, meaning that it overtook Telenor again for third spot in the market, having lost this position for a brief while in March. In absolute terms Pakistan Telecom's Ufone was the best performer in April, adding 0.89m customers, or 32% of the monthly total. The net result was a gain of 0.5pp of market share for Ufone, 0.4pp for Warid and 0.2pp for Telenor, whilst market leader Mobilink gave up a further 1.1pp reducing its overall share to 43.2%.

Mobilink did break the 25m customer barrier during the month, however, becoming only the 11th Asian mobile company to do so, after China Mobile, China Unicom, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, Telkomsel, Bharti, Reliance, BSNL, Hutch and PLDT.

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