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3G Subscribers in South Korea Jump As SK Telecom Promotes Services
Korea Investments & Securities reports that in September, the number of
mobile telecom subscribers in South Korea grew 291,183 MoM to 42.8 million, and
the service penetration rate rose to 87.9%.
Monthly net additions, which
plunged to 59,101 in July, the lowest figure this year and to 131,000 in August,
rebounded to the level of 1H07's monthly average thanks to the lower churn
rate.
SK Telecom's robust net additions continued in September. From the beginning of 2007, the operator added 1.3 million new subscribers up to September, sitting on 51.3% of the net additions market. During September, LG Telecom's market share advanced 0.1%p MoM while KTF retreated 0.1%p MoM.
The number of 3G service subscribers in South Korea grew by 720,000 in September reaching a total of 3.2 million. Following KTF, SK Telecom started to encourage its subscribers to migrate to 3G services from 3Q07 in earnest. In September, SK Telecom attracted 372,000 net additions to its 3G service, beating KTF's 348,000. In cumulative numbers, SK Telecom and KTF have 1.2 million and 2 million, which account for 5.4% and 14.9% of total subscribers, respectively.
In the case of LG Telecom, despite its commercialization of the EV-DO rev.A service in mid-September, subscriber attraction remains insignificant. Korea Investments & Securities expects that LG Telecom will see a healthy subscriber inflow to its 3G service from end-October when the service coverage expands to 84 cities nationwide and new handset models are added.
September also witnessed the lowest churn rate in 2007. In September, the number of "010" prefixes increased MoM from 690,000 to 770,000. However, the number of mobile number portability (MNP) subscribers and handset change subscribers dropped MoM from 650,000 and 580,000 to 560,000 and 410,000, respectively. Accordingly, the total handset supply ("010" prefix + MNP + handset change) declined from the previous month and recorded the lowest figure since February this year. The sharp fall in MNP also reduced the churn rate by 0.5%p to 2.4%, the lowest this year.
Posted to the site on 9th October 2007