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South Korea - Another Slow Summer South of the 38th Parallel
The latest figures from the three South Korean operators indicate that the total number of mobile customers was 42.8m at the end of September. This represents an annual growth rate of 7.8%, with net additions of 3.1 million in the year.
After relatively weak figures for net additions in July and August of 59.1k and 131.1k respectively, September saw something of a resurgence with 291k new connections. In fact, there is a fairly pronounced seasonal trend in the Korean mobile market, with July and August traditionally slow months. In 2004, the summer slump was particularly dramatic, although the following year saw very consistent proportionate growth across the year. August was the slowest month in 2006, while July looks set to be 2007's weakest link. Except for July, proportionate growth in 2007 has tracked above the two previous years, and August and September have been stronger than any of the three previous years.
If the traditional pattern is maintained this year, then growth should rise slightly in October, and reach a peak in November.
The market remains highly stratified: SK Telecom (SKT) is the clear market leader with 21.6 million customers at the end of September, with KT Freetel (KTF) in second place on 13.6 million and LG Telecom (LGT) on 7.8 million. Market shares have altered very little since September 2006, with SKT remaining unchanged on 50.5%, KTF losing 0.4pp to hit 31.7% and LGT gaining 0.4pp to reach 17.8%. This makes South Korea one of the most stable three-player markets in the world. LGT's proportionate annual growth rate of 10.3% was the highest in the market, but it was only 2.4pp ahead of SKT and 4.0pp ahead of KTF, so there is almost no prospect of increased competition at any point in the foreseeable future, barring any extraordinary developments.
Posted to the site on 24th October 2007
This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World.
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