Lithuania Q3 07 Market Update - Tele2 Bucks the Downward Trend
At the end of Q3 07, the Lithuanian mobile market had reached 4.79 million customers, a penetration rate of 134.1%. Net additions stood at just 14.4k for the quarter. This is in fact the best result since the same quarter last year, as Q1 and Q2 both saw declines in the total customer base in excess of 50k, while just 1.2k new customers were added in Q4 06. However, a quarterly growth rate of 0.3% does not exactly represent a great success, and the fact that the total customer base has declined by 2.2% since the end of Q3 2006 serves to indicate that a turnaround seems unlikely.
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Market report
Rather, it appears that the Lithuanian market is approaching saturation point.
Bite has suffered the worst of the losses, with Q3 2007 the fourth successive quarter in which it saw its overall customer base shrink. It lost almost 56k customers in Q3 to finish the quarter on 1.04 million, almost 208k lower than at the same point in 2006. Although its contract base has increased by 43k in the same period to reach 426k - 41.1% of the total, as opposed to 30.8% at the end of Q3 2006 - this does little to soften the blow.
Omnitel has also seen a decline in customers since the end of Q3 2006, although a net gain of 28k in Q3 almost succeeded in compensating for the losses of Q1 and Q2, with the total customer base standing at 2.04 million at the end of Q3, 8k down compared to Q3 2006. Unlike Bite, this decline was focused on the contract base, which lost 6k customers, leaving Omnitel with 762k contract customers, 37.3% of the total, at the end of Q3 2007.
Tele2 was the only one of the three operators to record a gain in customers, adding 106k to reach 1.72 million at the end of Q3. Indeed, Tele2 has succeeded in adding customers in each of the past four quarters, a remarkable achievement considering the poor performances of its competitors. In doing so, it has increased its market share from 32.8% at the end of Q3 2006 to 35.8% at the end of Q3 2007. Omnitel also added 0.8pp of market share to reach 42.6%, while Bite lost 3.8pp to end on 21.6%, its lowest share for over 10 years.
Posted to the site on 31st October 2007
This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World.
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