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Brazil September 2008 Customer Numbers
The total number of mobile connections in Brazil reached 140.79m at the end of September 2008, equivalent to a penetration rate of 73.2%. Monthly net additions stood at 2.37m down from 3.09m in August, but up on the 1.82m recorded in September 2007. The Brazilian market follows a strongly seasonal pattern, as the chart on the left shows: August is traditionally the second best month for growth, behind December.
The Brazilian market is dominated by prepaid, which accounted for 81.1% of the total market at the end of September, up from 80.4% a year earlier. There were 1.91m new prepaid customers in September compared to 0.46m contract, with end-month totals of 114.16m and 26.62m respectively. In terms of technology, GSM rules the roost with 121.95m connections at the end of the month, up 2.73m in September and 38.30m in the year. CDMA technology, which is used solely by market leader Vivo, continues its decline: it lost 0.55m customers in September, with an annual fall of 7.66m taking the total base to 15.02m. Analogue AMPS/ TDMA technology is also on the wane, losing 0.28m in September to finish on 2.37m. Meanwhile, W- CDMA is making a strong start, with 0.47m net additions in its fourth month of service giving it a total of 1.45m connections.
Brazilian regulator Anatel recently began releasing customer numbers for the individual operators in the market. Although these have yet to be confirmed by the operators themselves, they do give us a preliminary indication of the state of play at the end of Q3. Vivo finished with 42.28m, whilst according to Anatel Claro surpassed its rival TIM with 35.67m compared to 35.22m at the end of the month. This is certainly consistent with the trend seen in recent quarters: Claro closed the gap from 1.35m at the end of Q1 to 0.70m at the end of Q2.
In fourth place in the market was Oi (TNL / Telemar), which finished with 21.86m customers. However, recent news has confirmed that its merger with Brasil Telecom has been approved; on a pro forma basis, this would give Oi a customer base of 27.11m and 19.3% market share at the end of September.
Posted to the site on 22nd October 2008
This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World.
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