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Indonesia Subscriber Growth Reports Another Record Quarter
The Indonesian market achieved a record figure for quarterly net additions in Q3 08 with an increase of 15.5m, 2m higher than the previous record, which was set in Q2 08. This took the number of connections in Indonesia to 131.64m, with annual growth of 57.1% compared to 47.9% for the prior twelve months.
In Q2 08, market leader Telkomsel saw its worst quarterly performance since Q4 05 with an uplift of just 1.1m. The drivers of growth were second- and third-placed operators Satelindo and Excelcomindo. Satelindo recorded what was then the highest figure for quarterly net additions ever seen in Indonesia, a gain of 6.0m, while Excelcomindo achieved the second highest with 4.5m. However, Q3 08 saw Telkomsel respond in spectacular fashion, adding a massive 8.1m connections in the quarter to finish on 60.5m.
Neither Satelindo nor Excelcomindo came anywhere close to matching this figure, although the former performed well with a gain of 3.1m, up from 2.0m in Q3 07. Excelcomindo saw a slightly more disappointing result, its 2.2m gain being down on the 2.6m of the year-earlier quarter.
Despite Telkomsel's resurgence, a year-on-year comparison shows a 7.1pp drop in market share to 46.0%. Satelindo was up 0.6pp to 26.9% while Excelcomindo gained 3.8pp to finish the quarter on 19.1%. In real terms Satelindo finished with 35.5m while Excelcomindo had 25.1m.
The other player in the market to see an upturn in growth in Q3 08 was Natrindo, which was recently relaunched as Axis having been acquired by Saudi Telecom. It added 1.15m customers during Q3 to finish the quarter on 1.6m. It remained in sixth place, however, behind Hutchison and Mobile-8. Hutchison was up 0.40m quarterly to 3.6m while Mobile-8 gained 0.4m to 4.2m.
Penetration surged up from 33.6% at the end of Q3 07 to 52.0% a year later. Q4 was the strongest quarter in both 2006 and 2007, so it is not unlikely that the 55% will be shown to have been reached by the end of 2008.
Posted to the site on 29th January 2009
This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World.
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