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Both Taiwan's Chunghwa and Taiwan Mobile Record Declines in ARPU
Chunghwa is TaiwanÃ's market leader in terms of customer numbers, while Taiwan Mobile occupied second position at the end of Q2 08, just ahead of FarEasTone. However, Taiwan Mobile recorded a net gain of just 700 customers in Q3 08, which means that FarEasTone only has to add more than 1000 customers to take its second place. Taiwan Mobile finished Q3 with 6.22m customers, while Chunghwa increased its lead to more than 2.6m with an end-quarter total of 8.87m.
Although Taiwan Mobile ;squarterly boost was disappointing, it was at least an improvement on the previous two quarters, both of which saw net declines. On an annual basis, it saw a narrow fall of 4.2k, equivalent to 0.1%. By contrast, Chunghwa recorded its best figure for net additions for two years with a quarterly gain of 91k, although its annual boost of 214k was slightly down on the year-earlier figure of 244k.
Both operatorsÃ' customer bases are dominated by contract, with figures of 92.4% contract for Chunghwa and 90.2% for Taiwan Mobile. However, both have seen a slight decline in customer quality: ChunghwaÃ's contract percentage was down 0.3pp year on year while Taiwan Mobile ‘s dropped by 1.4pp.
Both also saw declines in ARPU. ChunghwaÃ's continued customer growth is no doubt attributable at least in part to its low ARPU, with a Q3 08 average of TWD 692 per month, down from TWD 733 a year earlier. Taiwan Mobile saw a smaller drop, from TWD 799 to TWD 780 - a similar level to that recorded by FarEasTone in the previous quarter.
The declines in ARPU, coupled with weak or negative customer growth, imply revenue declines at both operators. Chunghwa saw a 3.5% fall in quarterly mobile revenue to TWD 18.29bn, while Taiwan Mobile was down 3.3% to TWD 14.72bn. Both also saw EBITDA declines. Chunghwa does not report mobile EBITDA separately, but the total figure was down 12.4% to TWD 24.04bn, while Taiwan Mobile saw a 6.9% decline in mobile EBITDA to TWD 6.66bn.
Posted to the site on 6th November 2008
This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World.
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